As excitement about Gen AI grows, can companies keep up?

Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is a fast-moving train.

Perhaps that’s why many companies seem unsure about when to hop onboard.

A majority of college-educated respondents in a recent survey, both in their roles as employees and consumers, are welcoming the ever-increasing presence of Gen AI in their everyday lives. However, other research questions whether companies are ready to deliver.

The 2024 KPMG Generative AI Consumer Trust Survey found that 51% of American adults are extremely excited or very excited about Gen AI. However, a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) global survey of 1,406 C-suite executives found that 66% are ambivalent or dissatisfied with their companies’ progress with Gen AI and other forms of AI.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” wrote the authors of the BCG report. “If 2023 was the year when AI became democratized, 2024 is the year to turn Gen AI’s magic into business impact.”

According to the report, that isn’t yet happening on a widespread basis.

While two-thirds of executives said they believe it will take at least two years for Gen AI to “move beyond the hype,” just 8.7% of executives in the survey reported that their companies are expected to invest more than $50 million in Gen AI and other AI technologies in 2024.

Among executives at those companies investing heavily, 67% expect to benefit from cost savings of more than 10% in 2024 as a result of that commitment.

While thinking big can pay dividends, starting small can prove profitable as well: 46% of all executives surveyed said they expect cost savings of more than 10%.

Seventy-one percent of executives described their companies’ current approach to AI as “limited experimentation and small-scale pilots.”

Jason Staats, a former firm leader who recently helped CPA.com design a Gen AI toolkit, said during the Digital CPA Conference last month that Gen AI “may require a different level of investment and learning than we’ve had to make before.” Staats advocates for starting now as opposed to being focused on starting small versus starting big, adding that companies can better advance Gen AI adoption with a bottom-up approach that can help optimize agility.

A level of attention is essential in light of the KPMG survey, in which 58% of college-educated U.S. adults said Gen AI already has a significant impact on their professional lives and 42% said it has a significant impact on their personal lives.

And the impact will only increase: Asked to look ahead two years, 77% said they expect Gen AI to have a significant impact on their professional lives and 60% expect it to have a significant impact on their personal lives.

The BCG report, based on in-depth interviews with top executives in the survey and the consulting group’s own analysis, recommended that companies optimize their use of Gen AI by:

• Investing in productivity and topline growth;

• Upskilling systematically;

• Being vigilant about cost of use;

• Building strategic relationships; and

• Implementing responsible AI principles.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Bryan Strickland at Bryan.Strickland@aicpa-cima.com.