Following the release of ChatGPT, AI has become a common topic of discussion around business, technology, and the like and made waves in these industries.
This emerging technology poses significant potential for companies that incorporate it in their operations. For instance, internal processes can be executed more efficiently by using AI to automate data entry, provide 24/7 e-commerce chatbots, and create personalized content (Bain & Company, 2023). An anonymous interviewee who uses AI in their real estate work shares how ChatGPT has helped their marketing strategies. “It has saved me so much time. I have used it to update preexisting marketing materials and company bio information to make it sound updated, new, and exciting.” Additionally, businesses can use AI to make data-driven decisions supported by predictive analytics, where historical data is analyzed to predict future events. To illustrate this, Amazon collects data on their customers’ buying habits to predict what customers need and provide product recommendations (Marr, 2019). Additionally, AI can help predict future sales, allowing businesses to optimize inventory management and have enough products to meet demand (Marcano, 2023).
Because companies can leverage AI to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and support decision-making, interest in this technology has skyrocketed. Results from a 2022 McKinsey survey showcase that adoption of AI has increased by over 100% since 2017 (McKinsey & Company, 2022). Moreover, in a 2022 NewVantage Partners survey, 92% of large companies are achieving returns on their data and AI investments versus 48% in 2017 (Bean and Davenport, 2022).
However, AI comes with risks and uncertainties: Christian, a college student who's taken AI-related courses and experimented using AI, explains that major risks include “the lack of oversight of development, ethics, and relevant legislation.” Additionally, implementing this technology involves privacy and security issues, such as potential exploitation of AI’s vulnerabilities or sensitive data (Baxter and Schlesinger, 2023), and algorithms may generate offensive, biased, or incorrect content, particularly if they were trained using biased or incomplete data (Durbin, 2023). As a result, companies must take precautions to avoid regulatory, reputational, and financial damage.
With that being said, the future for incorporating AI into business operations remains bright as investments and interest grow, and businesses stand to reap significant benefits by responsibly adopting AI.
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