Dive Brief:
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A majority (61%) of finance executives in the tech sector expect their organizations to invest in artificial intelligence this year, according to advisory services firm Grant Thornton.
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In a survey of 150 industry finance leaders, AI topped the list of areas cited as technology-related investment priorities for 2024, according to a recently published Grant Thornton report on the findings. Other such areas included cybersecurity (cited by 45% of respondents as a priority); data analytics and business intelligence (39%); data security and privacy solutions (27%); enterprise resource planning systems (25%); blockchain technology (24%); and robotic process automation (20%).
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“AI technology has been around for decades, but it’s recently become a priority tool for today’s business needs,” the report said.
Dive Insight:
The business demand for AI technologies has exploded since Microsoft-backed OpenAI introduced its ChatGPT tool in November 2022.
Global management consultancy firm Bain & Company reported last September that 89% of software companies were already using AI to differentiate their products — 15 percentage points higher than other sectors. The current generation of AI tools and models could help companies speed up 20% of worker tasks without a loss in quality, according to the research.
Tech giants Google and Amazon have both recently announced sweeping layoffs, even as they lean into AI investments, CNN reported.
In Grant Thornton’s poll, 61% of respondents said they expected their organizations to use AI to enhance customer experience and engagement. Other top use cases included improving decision making (54%) and automating routine tasks and processes (51%).
Tech finance leaders’ top AI adoption concern was the risk of data privacy and security challenges (47%), followed by negative workforce impacts such as job displacement (37%); the potential for biases in data used to train generative AI models (33%); and lack of clarity on the return on investment produced by generative AI initiatives.
