Generative AI sees rapid adoption in the enterprise

Generative AI has seen rapid adoption in the enterprise with 67 percent of respondents to a new study reporting that their companies are currently using generative AI, and 38 percent of this group saying that their companies have been working with AI for less than a year.

The report from O'Reilly shows many are still in the early stages of the AI journey, however. 18 percent report having applications in production, but there are multiple bottlenecks for enterprises looking to implement these technologies. First is identifying appropriate use cases (53 percent), followed by legal issues, risk, and compliance (38 percent).

"Generative AI is a gateway to a new era of opportunity for businesses, with the potential to drive growth, optimize operations, and deliver exceptional customer experiences that set them apart from the competition," says Mary Treseler, chief content officer at O'Reilly. "But without the proper talent in place to manage it, this rapidly evolving technology can quickly outpace enterprise resources. As this groundbreaking report unveils, we are far from reaching the peak of what generative AI can achieve, and organizations still have time to invest in the critical skills development required to be at the forefront of the AI revolution."

The rapid adoption of generative AI has also created a demand for technology workers with the expertise to move efforts along, with AI programming (66 percent), data analysis (59 percent), and operations for AI/ML (54 percent) the most-needed skills. General AI literacy (52 percent) is also critical, as users have learned when encountering the hallucinations generative AI tools sometimes exhibit.

In terms of risk, O'Reilly asked those whose companies are working with AI what they’re testing for. The top five responses are unexpected outcomes (49 percent), security vulnerabilities (48 percent), safety and reliability (46 percent), fairness, bias, and ethics (46 percent), and privacy (46 percent).

In terms of the advantages of AI, 54 percent of AI users believe it will lead to greater overall productivity, with only four percent pointing to lower head counts. Where generative AI is currently being used, the survey found that the most common application is programming (77 percent), using tools like GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT. Data analysis (70 percent) and customer-facing applications (65 percent) round out the top three use cases for generative AI in the enterprise right now, with additional nods to the technology's help in generating marketing (47 percent) and other forms of copy (56 percent).

The full report is available from the O'Reilly site.

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