Gartner Says CIOs Must Prioritize Their AI Ambition and AI-Ready Scenarios for Next 12-24 Months - Seite 2

CIOs can help their CEO and CxO peers cut through AI complexity and define their organization’s AI ambition by examining the opportunities and risks of using GenAI in four areas: the back office, the front office, new products and services, and new core capabilities (See Figure 1).

Be AI-Ready

“As AI continues transforming the relationship between humans and machines, CIOs must actively shape the nature of this change,” said Scheibenreif. “In this new era of human-machine interaction, there will be many unforeseen consequences.”

“A technology decision is not just a technology decision anymore. It is a technology, economic, social and ethical decision all at once,” said Mesaglio. “To navigate decisions about AI in their organization, CIOs and IT leaders need lighthouse principles — a vision for AI that lights the way and says what kind of human-machine relationships they will and will not accept.”

However, few organizations have established lighthouse principles or even a clear vision for AI. A Gartner survey in June 2023 of 606 CIOs and technology leaders found that only 9% of organizations have an AI vision statement in place, and more than one-third of respondents had no plans to create an AI vision statement.

To facilitate swift and safe adoption of generative AI in the next 12 months, organizations must do three things:

• Establish AI-ready principles: Lighthouse principles must align with the values of the organization. The organization’s values must be the guiding light for navigating the unknowns of how humans and machines will interact.
• Make data AI-ready: For data to be AI-ready, it must meet five criteria. It is secure, enriched, fair, accurate and is governed by the lighthouse principles.
• Implement AI-ready security: For every positive use of AI, someone is putting that same technology to negative use. This is the dark side of AI. CIOs should prepare for new attack vectors and work with the executive team to create an acceptable use policy for public generative AI solutions.

“The era of AI-powered business will lead to unintended consequences without advance planning. CIOs need a way to light the way forward, even when everything seems new or murky,” said Scheibenreif. “To safely harness this disruption, CIOs must work with executive leaders to define their ambitions for using everyday AI and game-changing AI, and to establish AI-ready principles, data and security.”