By Dr Sudheer Parwana, Technology Lead for PwC Midlands

Generative AI (GenAI) is redefining how we work, accelerating innovation, increasing speed to market, and enabling new business models. But maximising its potential and using it responsibly requires new skills, the right strategy and rich insights to steer your decisions and actions.

Overall, GenAI is predicted to drive a 7% increase in global GDP by 2030 alone. Business leaders across all industries are eagerly exploring GenAI’s possibilities, as they look to secure the competitive advantage and productivity gains made possible through innovation and technology. The 2023 PwC CEO survey found that technology investments are the top priority for business leaders and around three-quarter of companies are focused on automation, upskilling and deploying advanced technologies such as AI.

Understanding the opportunities and risks associated with generative AI has become a top priority for leaders looking to unlock value from tech-transformation, from delivering efficiency and productivity gains to powering business model transformations across multiple industries.

The need to operate with core values of responsibility and trust

As businesses develop and advance their AI adoption plans, responsible AI and ethics must be at the foundation. The opportunities created by AI come with risks, including model explanation and transparency, data privacy, confidentiality and system bias. The key is to develop a responsible AI framework to ensure your business is protected. It’s also vital organisations retain the power of human ingenuity and decision making, to ensure their people are understanding and verifying GenAI outputs.

And with multiple regulatory approaches emerging around the world, it’s essential for organisations to ensure they can respond and adapt to the fast-evolving regulatory environment. Engaging the workforce and C-suite plays a vital role in enabling this.

People are critical to success with GenAI

One of the most powerful implications of GenAI is its ability to transform how we work and reshape job roles. Headline figures suggest that 80% of roles will, in one way or another, experience a degree of impact from GenAI. GenAI will impact workforces, and create new jobs. Leaders need to get ahead of this to support, showcase and champion the need for technology adoption.

Businesses need to think carefully about how they reskill their people to ensure they can work with, and embrace, emerging technologies. The application of human qualities, such as ethics and judgement, are essential and organisations must therefore engage their people and upskill them for GenAI success.

LLMs (large language models) that use natural language inputs, are also democratising access to insights and data that were only previously available to specialists. This means workforces have access to deeper insights and richer data. This knowledge can be used to drive better business decisions and a more proactive, resilient way of doing business.

Finding the right use cases, with the buy-in of the workforce, will accelerate GenAI adoption and ensure human judgement and qualities are being harnessed, alongside the productivity gains of new technology.

Be open to innovation and change

GenAI is not just changing the way we work, but also opening new revenue streams. Efficiency, diversification and productivity gains can be transformative. However, there are other considerations to take into account, such as customer receptiveness to new technology across different geographies and demographics. This isn’t a one size fits all approach. You must adopt the right technology, in the right way.

Your customers, industry or business priorities may not align with specific process changes or capabilities.Consider what feels authentic to you, your workforce and your stakeholders. Businesses must become adept at orchestrating multiple models – large and small, proprietary and open source – to create products that delight customers, deliver value and meet compliance requirements.

Explore how PwC Midlands are supporting organisations to define and implement their response to GenAI, with a responsible approach that will deliver sustained value and growth. Get in touch.