Tech Blueprint take aways - from AI hype to real value
Last week I visited Tech Blueprint at World of Volvo, a full day during Gothenburg Tech Week focusing on AI and how to go from pilot to production. Or rather, why almost no one manages to get there.
Those of you who have an ear to the ground when it comes to AI have probably not missed the recent MIT report that shows that 95% of all AI initiatives in the enterprise world fail. Sweden and the Nordic countries are also far behind when it comes to GenAI investments. Almost everything that is done stops at PoC or pilot. The result is that instead of bang for your buck, we get a growing graveyard of pilot solutions that never take off, but still cost money to operate.
So why is this happening?
Technology is developing faster than culture.
Organizations invest 90% in algorithms and tech but only 10% in people and processes. This is often where AI initiatives die because AI, like so much else, is not an IT initiative. It is a change initiative and then the organization must have the conditions to be able and willing to change.
Management and IT are pulling in different directions.
Management wants to show initiative and shouts “Go!” while IT and security are holding back and wondering if they can and want to even let AI in. It is difficult to build and scale something that is not sanctioned throughout the entire organization.
The business value is forgotten.
Surprisingly many projects are started without clear use cases or business cases. Then it becomes challenging to get management and organization on board and to know if the solution adds any real value.
But the most striking thing was still the basic tone. There was surprisingly much talk about failures, lack of ROI and missing value. Although I myself can sometimes call for a slightly more sober perspective on the AI revolution, I do not really agree that missing returns and the lack of larger, revolutionary, production-ready solutions are particularly strange in the phase we are in.
GenAI, not to mention the potentially upcoming AGI, is a major paradigm shift with completely new ways and tools to do things. All major technological shifts throughout history such as electricity, the internet and mobility have required their exploration phase. The phase where we don’t know much, where everything is wow, hype, experimentation and often bland platitudes like “We are shaping the future”, “We’re in the driver’s seat of the AI revolution” or “AI is in our DNA”. Without that phase we will never get to the next one. This is where we learn and allow ourselves to fail fast and big in order to build bigger and better in the next phase.
The important thing is that we don’t confuse exploration with delivery – or boasting with substance. If we want to take the next step into a phase where we avoid another generation of AI zombies and instead build sustainable AI solutions that create value and return, we need to start talking more about change management, processes and business benefit instead of staring blindly at the technology.
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Markus Bergendahl
Tech Director and Senior Solution Architect, Gothenburg
