Thriving in the era of pervasive AI

In the era of pervasive AI, early-mover advantage may be fading away. When AI becomes ubiquitous, what will it take to stand out in the market? How can AI adopters maintain their edge?

For the third straight year, Deloitte surveyed executives about their companies’ sentiments and practices regarding AI technologies. We were particularly interested in understanding what it will take to stay ahead of the pack as AI adoption grows—and we wanted to learn how adopters are managing risk around the technologies as AI governance, trust, and ethics become more of a boardroom issue.

By taking the global pulse of AI, we uncovered the following key insight:

• Adopters continue to have confidence in AI technologies’ ability to drive value and advantage.
• Early-mover advantage may fade soon.
• Virtually all adopters are using AI to improve efficiency; mature adopters are also harnessing the technologies to boost differentiation.
• AI adopters tend to buy more than they build, and they see having the best AI technology as key to competitive advantage.
• Adopters recognize AI’s risks, but a “preparedness gap” spans strategic, operational, and ethical risks.

In the 2nd edition, we detailed the bullish attitude of AI adopters and their increasing investments and deployments. We concluded that companies should balance their excitement with a strong ability to execute. One year later, we have found that AI solutions are proliferating, from custom solutions to enterprise applications to devices with embedded AI. Meanwhile, adopters don’t want to lose their advantage as their industry peers catch up. In order to keep an edge, there are three things that both current and future adopters can do: