Generative AI headlines are outpacing enterprise adoption – CIO

Experimentation with a use case driven approach.

Exploring the art of the possible and identifying top use cases is the name of the game. For those companies that have chosen to experiment, they’re doing so largely in a controlled sandbox environment, with an emphasis on learning and understanding how to pair the technology with human capabilities to optimize for value and risk. At least for now, they seem focused on use cases that improve productivity, with compelling opportunities in the areas of sales & marketing, code generation, and document generation. 

Looking forward.

Beyond the data centers (and of course the lawyers), it’s still unclear where in the generative AI ecosystem the most value will be captured. Many hypothesize that customizing Large Language Models (LLM) for your enterprise will be futile, and that real value will come from the unique data your organization can “sprinkle” into LLMs, which will become more and more commoditized. Meanwhile, CISOs are rethinking their security posture, anticipating that bad actors will use generative AI to launch more effective phishing campaigns, among other schemes to compromise security.

Nearly all of us have heard the adage that the early bird gets the worm. Fewer have heard, or given appropriate weight to, the appended version that the second mouse gets the cheese. As exciting as generative AI is, its adoption by the business community might in time prove to be a second-mouse scenario. Surely, generative AI will exceed our imagination in time, but first, mistakes will be made. And as powerful a tool as it is, some of those mistakes may be catastrophic for the organizations that make them.

Besides, for any organization that employs AI, the technology will be useful, still, in proportion to the cleanliness and completeness of the information available to it. Perhaps, then, this is a time for meditation, a time to focus on tidying and positioning your organization for the day the clearest and most valuable use of AI presents itself to you. By that measure, you will indeed have done better than you thought.