How businesses can survive the AI black hole

IT IS the conversation that’s dominating board rooms and strategy meetings. How are firms preparing for, or already harnessing, the potential of AI for their organisation?

A KPMG survey found that 65 per cent of executives anticipate a significant impact from generative AI (GenAI) within the next few years, even as many firms are still in the early stages of implementation. My own survey of Insead alumni found that 68 per cent of business leaders were already using GenAI at work.

This has fuelled significant investments in the sector, with funding reaching US$21 billion last year. But there is still a distinct lack of certainty about what exactly GenAI’s impact will look like. Reports veer from wild optimism about the technology’s capacity to increase productivity through deep pessimism around its effect on jobs, to outright panic about its impact on society as we know it.