Already, 2023 has been an explosive year for AI developments, with the latest tools being wielded by businesses and reaching broad user bases almost as soon as they become available. Within a few months of launching, a chatbot using artificial intelligence to generate convincingly human-sounding text responses became the fastest-growing consumer application in history. The sophisticated chatbot rapidly attracted 100 million monthly active users eager to put the tool to a variety of uses at an eye-popping rate.
Generative AI chatbots are just one example of the AI tools that businesses are eager to implement to drive what could be tremendous growth. As AI technology advances and a wider range of non-technical people become familiar with what AI can do, businesses that truly understand the technology and are transparent about how AI tools are used will likely be the ones best positioned for success.
AI is profitable
By 2030, AI could potentially contribute more than $15 trillion to the global economy. Part of that ballooning demand for AI is due to spiking interest from executives who are working harder to understand AI and exploring how to leverage the technology to expand profits or cut costs. According to a recent report from Deloitte, “enterprises that have an AI strategy are 1.7 times more likely to achieve their goals than those that lack such a vision.” There’s also evidence that more businesses today are discussing their AI strategy than ever before. Just four months into 2023, businesses have mentioned generative AI technology in more earning calls and press releases than in all of 2022.
Analysts estimate there are currently hundreds of ways that businesses use AI daily to reach their goals. For example, generative AI can be used to create marketing content, enhance sales techniques, automate customer support, heighten data privacy standards, and speed up application development.
Deloitte reported that as AI evolves, businesses will continue to find new use cases, and for some businesses, rapid adoption of AI could lead to game-changing profits. Some of the largest global companies in financial services, entertainment, technology, health care, and other industries are already seeing those results. Responding to Deloitte's 2022 State of AI in the Enterprise survey of 2,620 global business leaders, 94 percent of decision-makers expect that AI will be critical to their organization's success over the next five years.
Explainability and transparency
Today, workers at every level are voicing varied concerns, stoking mistrust in AI systems. For example, a Deloitte report referenced one survey where 41 percent of technologists had concerns about the ethics of AI tools, while 47 percent of business leaders had concerns about the transparency of AI systems. Some executives don’t trust AI to carry out mission-critical tasks, Deloitte found. Building trust with different types of workers often begins with airing out concerns and then addressing them directly. Without such efforts to engage workers, Deloitte cautioned that “a lack of trust could ultimately derail” AI efforts.
“Explainability is one of the biggest differentiators between the successful use of AI at scale and failure to reap returns on AI investment, yet many businesses haven’t figured out how to achieve it,” said Deloitte.
To continue maximizing benefits from AI, the next step for many companies is getting workers more involved with creating AI solutions, Deloitte reported, so that workers trust it and feel comfortable working with it to get optimal results. The report noted: “Developing processes that leverage AI in transparent and explainable ways will be key to spurring adoption.”
With AI buzz peaking, many organizations claim they’re AI-fueled. But today, leveraging AI means much more than just automating tasks where the computer delivers results without human input. The next phase of AI evolution is deploying more human-machine interactions, where AI tools make recommendations and humans decide how to leverage those insights. For organizations to succeed in this stage, getting workers to trust AI tools is essential to achieving larger business goals.
Building trust in AI
Building trust in AI is one of the best strategies for businesses to help ensure returns on investments in AI. Deloitte recommends training workers and explaining how AI works within their organizations. Workers want to know not just how AI models function to reach their decisions, but the justification driving those decisions, and managers must be prepared to answer worker questions to spur mass adoption of AI tools. Unsurprisingly, some managers are increasingly looking to recruit team members at every level who are open to working with AI to complete mission-critical tasks, Deloitte reported.
Increasing trust in AI is also key to ensuring worker enthusiasm, as enterprises pursue new growth opportunities, and training can help workers recognize when AI criticism is mostly just hype.
With many businesses just now figuring out how to responsibly weave AI into their efforts, it’s easy to see why executives and workers feel hesitant about working with AI processes—especially when AI decisions cannot be easily explained. That's why, according to Deloitte, the most effective approaches to AI adoption treat the technology as just a piece in the process that can be easily communicated to all company stakeholders. Following this advice, Deloitte said businesses can also more easily talk to workers and identify what’s causing mistrust, then alleviate concerns and build trust by “leaning on data transparency, algorithmic explainability, and AI reliability.”
Jason Lim, an identity management capability manager for the Transportation Security Administration, explained that TSA partnered with Apple and other industry partners to use AI to screen an influx of airline travelers after pandemic restrictions were lifted. They developed an app that eliminated delays potentially caused by workers attempting to confirm information from different forms of IDs. TSA relied on AI to scan and quickly parse documents, which enhanced security and streamlined the screening process. Lim said that increasing worker trust in AI tools can be as easy as developing an interface that workers understand how to use.
“What we’re designing is an interface of trust between a human and a machine,” Lim said. “Now you’re taking an input from a machine and feeding it into your decision-making. If humans don’t trust machines or think they’re making the right call, it won’t be used.”
An automaker in the United Kingdom was able to guarantee the adoption of AI tools by bringing frontline workers into the AI tool development process. The assembly workers helped advise leadership on how AI could be used to control assembly robots and potentially prevent misaligned parts from disrupting the assembly line. Managers listened to feedback on common issues that occurred and discussed how machine learning could give workers more control. Ultimately, the car manufacturer ended up introducing AI where workers advised it would be needed most, gaining more trust by allowing workers to weigh in. The collaborative effort also helped leadership connect the dots on how workers could significantly benefit from AI improvements. It's a positive example of how powerful AI can be when serving as an assistant to any worker.
As AI technology evolves, businesses in the know often implement machine learning operations (MLOps), which include procedures or automated processes that work to build worker trust by ensuring AI tools are deployed in consistent and reliable ways. Alongside AI technologies and use cases, the MLOps market is rapidly growing and is "expected to expand to nearly $4 billion by 2025," Deloitte reported. Some companies can also benefit from offering ongoing training to help workers learn how AI systems function to make decisions. Others might establish mechanisms for workers to review AI performance, including accessing regularly posted performance data or receiving key updates detailing any refinements to AI systems.
The potential benefits of businesses building worker trust in AI are enormous, Deloitte reported, driving better decision-making across industries that can also hugely benefit society. On the other hand, failing to build trust in AI can lead businesses to join what some consider misinformed efforts to tamp down on new technologies, which could stall meaningful progress in many sectors. Earlier this year, a group of AI critics called for governments to impose a six-month pause in AI development, expressing concerns that super-intelligent AI models are developing faster than even leading technologists could keep up with. This criticism quickly drew backlash, though, with many in the tech community urging instead for all stakeholders to educate themselves on how AI currently works so that responsible AI development can continue benefiting society.
Government regulators know that AI tools are here to stay and are currently scrambling to learn more about AI to regulate industries. The pressure is on, and already at all levels of the United States government, a wave of regulatory legislation, executive decisions, and agency mandates have been introduced or are in the works. Ensuring compliance of AI systems will likely soon become a top priority for many businesses, as AI regulatory standards are established and governments continue paying closer attention than ever before to how industries are using AI. Like workers, governments are seeking more transparency about how AI is being used to achieve business objectives. For example, the US President has announced plans to audit industry AI tools, seeking ways to monitor these tools that “now drive important decisions across sectors, while data is helping to revolutionize global industries.”
So far, these regulatory standards simply offer guidelines for US businesses but don’t yet introduce restrictions that could potentially limit businesses’ AI use, but that could change in the future. Businesses that focus on transparency and explainability of AI systems to inform workers may find themselves better prepared for compliance, as regulatory waves keep coming.
What the future holds
As governments, businesses, workers, and consumers all begin embracing AI, Deloitte forecasted that businesses that more skillfully pair people with technology could end up not just creating more rewarding and productive workplaces, but also reinventing how society functions. Workers who become more engaged with AI tools may be more likely to use those tools to enhance their job performance. Some may even discover that they can use AI to invent a more desirable career path, and these AI perks “may lead to better job security for workers and better employee experience for businesses,” said Deloitte.
Deloitte reported that there are three steps to increase transparency that businesses can execute now to make AI systems more trustworthy—no matter if it’s regulators, consumers, or workers demanding explainability. First, businesses must ensure that customers know how their data is being used to propel AI systems. Next, businesses must be able to explain to workers how AI systems arrive at decisions. Finally, businesses must create and maintain MLOps to monitor AI performance and hold AI systems accountable.
"Implementing AI with this framework in mind may help the team view AI as a trusted copilot," Deloitte reported. “Workers and companies that learn to team with AI and leverage the unique strengths of both AI and humans may find that we’re all better together.”
Once workers fall into a rhythm—working with AI and trusting in developments—businesses will only find more uses for AI, which will likely further explode markets for AI. That’s why Deloitte says that the value of artificial intelligence is “now undoubtable.” For forward-thinking businesses ready to ramp up AI strategy, “the question has become how to best use it—and that often boils down to how much workers and end users trust AI tools," Deloitte reported.