Does your organisation have an AI (Artificial Intelligence) strategy? The recent explosion in Generative AI has given us all a new superpower. How can it help support your overall strategy? Our CEO & Founder, Jon Reay, puts this new era of AI in context and explains what it means for you.
You may have been asked what the AI strategy is for your organisation or have been seeking an answer to this yourself.
As with any form of specific strategy, the question is more what’s your overall strategy and how can, in this case AI, best enable it?
AI is undoubtedly the technology du jour. Everyone is talking about it, with excitement and trepidation in equal measure.
The majority of organisations are at least aware of or experimenting with AI1. Some are actively using it to make what they do easier or faster, such as note taking, data analysis or content creation.
Yet few organisations are currently using AI to create something genuinely new that they weren’t doing before. AI can create efficiencies, certainly, but also has the potential to boost creativity and product and service innovation too.
What does AI mean for your organisation and what should you do about it?
What is AI?
AI has been around for a long time. The prospect of intelligent machines replicating, complementing or surpassing humans goes back centuries. Computational advances have moved AI from just an idea to a real and active tool we can now all tap into in our daily lives.
AI is an umbrella term comprising machine learning, deep learning, robotics, neural networks and natural language processing (NLP).
The majority of advancements in AI today are powered by machine learning, where such platforms learn on their own by analysing training data.
There are also different types of AI based on the human characteristics they can replicate – narrow (singular task), general (on a par with humans) and super intelligence (surpassing humans).
A focus on Generative AI
The recent explosion in Generative AI sits in the foothills of an era of Artificial Generational Intelligence (AGI), where machines are able to perform tasks not necessarily trained or developed for. Large-language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT have given this level of power to all of us for the first time.
AI used to be something most organisations wouldn’t give too much attention to, but everything changed with ChatGPT.
The difference now is that AI has got significantly better at handling general queries and it has become more accessible – to anyone with a web browser.
Without any specific knowledge or skills you can now get instant answers, code, images and even video (with the advent of OpenAI’s Sora for example) from simple text or audio prompts.
We’re at an inflection point in AI and the capabilities of ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and others will continue to grow.
Your AI strategy
Organisations are adopting AI at different rates in different industries, types of organisation and functions within them.
In a global AI survey by IBM, 42% of large companies (more than 1,000 employees) reported having actively deployed AI in their business, with an additional 40% exploring or experimenting with it.
In a recent survey of small businesses by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), just 20% said they are already using AI. Of those not yet embracing it, concerns include not having the knowledge to use it correctly, their ability to manage security risks and data abuse.
A Savanta study also highlighted the disparity between small and large business adoption of AI, citing the small business focus on short term survival and not having the necessary skills or resources to benefit from new technologies.
In this McKinsey report, the most commonly reported business functions using AI are marketing and sales, product and service development, and service operations, such as customer care and back-office support.
Industries relying most heavily on knowledge work such as law and finance are likely to see more benefit (or disruption).
While all organisations can benefit from the accessibility of public models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, privacy and trust concerns have driven many organisations to use proprietary models and data sets, which are more costly and complex to establish and maintain.
We recommend that every organisation develops the knowledge and skills to understand tools like ChatGPT, experiments with them, and evaluates how they can help make things better or make better things.
How do you deal with what’s next?
There will always be advances in technology, whether in AI or other fields.
Organisations must remain open and curious to what technologies are on the horizon.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is a good place to start.
Some technologies may not be ready or suitable yet, but knowing about them at an early stage equips organisations better to leverage them as and when the time is right.
Organisations should evaluate how such technologies could help as part of an overall strategy, experiment with them and be agile enough to adopt changes in skills, personnel and the products and services offered.
Recent advances suggest we may be close to unlocking AI’s potential for complex reasoning, and one day achieving AGI – equalling human intelligence.
Looking beyond, the ultimate frontier is artificial super intelligence (ASI), surpassing human intelligence. But we’re a long way off this. For now, your AI strategy should be about how the tools we have access to now can support your overall strategy and that you have the mindset and capabilities for change.
If you’re looking to better exploit technology in your organisation, contact Rewrite Digital for a chat.
1 79% of respondents to a Global AI survey by McKinsey said they have had at least some exposure to generative AI
