Indian CEOs face many hurdles surrounding Gen AI: Report

While Indian companies are making progress with Generative AI (Gen AI) investments to maintain a competitive advantage, a study published by global consultancy firm EY revealed that  8 out of 10  (80%) CEOs are facing many hurdles and uncertainties surrounding Gen AI, which comes in the way of  Gen AI implementation and formulating an AI strategy. 

The survey, conducted in September and October, included 50 CEOs from India across five industries. noted that despite the enthusiasm around Gen AI, the chief executives are also finding it difficult to identify specific opportunities within their sectors. For example, most CEOs are grappling with the intricacies of navigating the AI landscape. They face difficulties in sifting through potential use cases and formulating a comprehensive strategy. The complexity of deciding where to invest and establishing partnerships adds to their challenges as they seek to identify specific opportunities within their sectors. 

Another significant challenge faced by organisations in allocating capital towards Gen AI initiatives is the rapid pace of technological change. Compelled to fund these gen AI investments, 84% are raising new capital or reallocating it from other investment projects or technology budgets. Surprisingly, 10% of respondents perceive a lack of alignment within the leadership team regarding how Gen AI should be integrated into the organisational strategy. 

Another obstacle highlighted by 30% of respondents is the dynamic nature of the regulatory environment. Navigating and adapting to regulatory changes associated with Gen AI initiatives increases the difficulty in making capital allocation decisions. 

Moreover, implementation is mostly located in pockets and large-scale implementations across organisational processes are missing. One obvious solution recommended by EY experts is that CEOs need to work closely with CTOs to assess and ensure that their AI plans are feasible and realistic. 

For 12% of CEOs, a key concern revolves around the substantial upfront investment required for AI. They further believe that substantial returns may take an extended period to materialise, due to major skill set limitations. 

This challenge was also echoed by a new report published by tech major IBM last week which said, Indian enterprises are grappling with challenges in roping in experts in AI/ML hybrid cloud – that are critical to unlock the power of GenAI, which is turning out to be a hindrance for its adoption. The report also shows that cloud leaders are concerned about the challenges associated with the privacy and confidentiality of data and information when adopting GenAI.  

Another global study published in October by AWS and the MIT Chief Data Officer Symposium conducted on CXO globally also conclude that despite this enthusiasm, it is clearly early days for AI in most organisations.  

According to the study, less than half or 47% said their organisations were allowing experimentation at the individual employee level, either with or without clear usage guidelines. Only 19% said they had department or business unit-level experimentation with gen AI use cases, and 11% had organisation-wide experiments. A mere 6% said they had one or more gen AI use cases in production deployment.