When was the last time you saw leaders agree that a new technology will have a massive impact on their businesses and yet they don’t have to ways assess and control the risks?
This new report from KPMG reveals that only 5% of the global businesses surveyed have a mature responsible AI governance programme in place. At the same time 65% believe generative AI will have high or extremely high impact on their organisations and 77% say it will have a bigger impact on society than any other new technology.
For leaders to harness the enormous potential of generative AI, they must set a clear strategy that quickly moves their organization from experimentation into industrialization
Steve Chase, US Consulting Leader, KPMG
This chimes with the AI Governance Report findings that 91% of organisations have no controls of their AI use and 58% of Boards have no-one on them that even understands what AI is, let alone how to assess and mitigate the risks it brings.
Playing with fire
The potential to damage your organisation (financially and reputationally) is huge if you start using AI without understanding what you are doing. But the reality is this technology is getting into your business through services and equipment you buy in, without leaders being aware that its there. So how can you protect your business from the negatives and harness the power of AI, including headline grabbing generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard?
Here are our recommendations for leaders:
- Get educated about what AI and generative AI are, what the possibilities are to use them in your organisation and where the pitfalls lie. Our course AI for Leaders – the Essentials is an excellent way to kick start your knowledge in just three hours study. Or ask us to do a Board development session to get all your Board up to speed in one go. We’ll also help you move to the next stage of deciding which business problems you want to use AI to solve.
- Understand your data. The most brilliant ideas to use AI will fail if you can’t get the data needed. So what data does the organisation already have and what new data could you source – with integrity?
- Get working on your AI governance. Find where using AI puts your organisation at risk and start planning the structures you need, what mitigations you can deploy and where the residual risks lie.
We understand how daunting this can seem. Our mission is to inspire leaders like you to use AI with wisdom and integrity so ask us to help you avoid the bad mistakes that will catch out other leaders.
