Wednesday 8 November, London: Today, IBM launched its new report Leadership in the Age of AI', which found that nearly 80% of senior UK businesses leaders surveyed are deploying generative AI, or are planning to, with half of respondents primarily motivated by enhancing customer experience.Based on a survey of 1,600 senior business executives across the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Sweden, the report explores how leadership is transforming as the region's businesses embrace generative AI.
The report also found that 97% of UK respondents who have or plan to deploy generative are actively engaged in shaping new ethical and governance frameworks.
As executives across the UK seek to untap the potential of AI while navigating growing security threats and an evolving regulatory and ethics landscape, the report explores what leadership in the age of AI truly entails.
Dr Nicola Hodson, CEO, IBM UK and Ireland
Heralded as a transformative tool to drive insights, reduce costs, and improve operational efficiencies, it is not surprising that business leaders are acting swiftly to embrace generative AI tools like IBM's watsonx. This latest research shows a real sense of opportunity in boardrooms across Europe. Almost 80% of UK business leaders have already deployed generative AI or intend to in the next year, demonstrating just how rapidly this revolution is happening.
Yet, as executives across the UK and Europe seek to untap the potential of AI, businesses must also navigate the evolving regulatory and ethical landscape surrounding it. Alongside their focus on delivering commercial value, business leaders now have the duty to lead the generative AI revolution responsibly embedding trust and transparency into every step of their adoption. This duty is placing new demands on business leaders who are facing pressure to deploy rapidly from multiple internal and external sources.
Generative AI is poised to be a once-in-a-generation business opportunity and leaders are responding quickly to the fast-moving developments. Taking the right approach to leadership in this new era will be vital for success and will have far-reaching benefits on business value, people, and society on a whole.
Main findings include:
Key drivers for AI take up
UK business leaders surveyed say that the embrace of generative AI is being driven by external and internal factors, with board members (38%) and the need to keep up with competitors (33%) identified as the two greatest forces.
This stems primarily from a desire to enhance customer experience in their business, (50%). This is followed by the desire to modernise and improve operational efficiency (44%) - using AI to automate routine processes and free up employees to take on higher value work while helping foster innovation - and boosting sales and revenue (39%).
Answering the AI boardroom agenda in particular, respondents were virtually unanimous (93%) on the potential of generative AI to power better leadership decisions.
Taking the lead on transparency and ethics
When it came to the challenges of deploying generative AI, UK respondents identified cost as the top challenge to deployment, followed by the pressure to hire specialist talent.
And, while policy makers in Europe develop AI policy frameworks, business leaders themselves are being required to take ownership and responsibility on key governance issues, particularly in the UK. Consistent with the European average, 38% of UK respondents cite security implications as the most fundamental to responsible AI.
Maintaining focus on continuous skills development
The availability of AI skills was also revealed to be an issue in UK, with less than two thirds of respondents (61%) believing their workforce had the right skills to adopt generative AI.
Consequently, improving AI skills proved to be a key priority, with 93% of UK leaders saying they were taking steps to ensure they have the right AI skills in their organisations.
UK business leaders are also assuming proactive accountability for helping establish the guardrails: 75% of UK leaders are planning to join discussions with peers or collaborate with policymakers on AI regulation.
Despite these promising conversations, however, there is still some way to go. Although 93% of respondents claim to have a good understanding of the regulatory context, a far smaller proportion (50%) felt clear about what it means for their business. This was one of the lowest levels across Europe, indicating the UK respondents feel less informed than their European counterparts.
Paul Weller, Head of Customer Propositions and Conversational AI, Retail Bank, NatWest Group commented on the findings of the report: At NatWest, we are always looking for new ways to improve our services and provide outstanding digital-first experiences for our customers. The advent of generative AI presents an exciting opportunity to accelerate our digital strategy and keep pace with our customer needs and expectations.
IBM's study shows there is a lot of enthusiasm from UK business leaders for the benefits generative AI can bring. However, like many other organisations, making sure the data and AI models we're using are secure and trustworthy is a top priority for us. This is particularly vital in highly regulated industries like financial services, which have stringent requirements in place to protect customers.
There's an abundance of opportunity for businesses that can make early gains with generative AI, but in order for customers, regulators and other stakeholders to be able to trust the outputs of AI models, having the right governance framework in place is going to be critical.
Asif Shah, People Services Digital Lead, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust observed: This new research from IBM suggests there s a lot of interest from UK or
