From Boardrooms to Backend: Generative AI Makes Its Power Move
In recent months, generative AI (genAI) has emerged as the newest game-changer for companies. According to the current McKinsey Global Survey, ‘The state of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s breakout year’ one-third of organizations have integrated gen AI tools into their operations in less than a year of their debut.
This surge in gen AI is not just another tech trend. C-suite executives are no longer relegating AI discussions to their tech departments. About a quarter of these top-tier leaders have incorporated genAI tools in their daily operations. More than a quarter of companies using AI have placed genAI high on their board’s discussion list, and a substantial 40% of respondents plan to ramp up their AI investment due to advancements in genAI.
Lareina Yee, senior partner at McKinsey and chair of the McKinsey Technology Council, shares: “We are in the early innings of generative AI, and companies already anticipate a meaningful impact on talent—from opening up new work opportunities and transforming how work gets done to introducing whole new job categories such as prompt engineering. One of the benefits of generative AI is that it can help nearly everyone with their jobs, and this is also its greatest challenge.”
Talent and the AI Revolution
Adapting to AI’s growth, there’s a clear shift in the roles organizations prioritize. Data engineers, machine learning engineers, and AI data scientists are the most sought-after compared to last year's demand for AI-related software engineers. Newer roles, like prompt engineering, are emerging to cater to genAI's specific requirements.
Yee provides a profound comparison: “This scale differs from traditional AI, which affected a fairly small—though no less important—portion of the workforce who had deep skills in technical areas like machine learning, data science, or robotics. Generative AI, in contrast, will still need highly skilled people to build large language models and train generative models, but users can be nearly anyone, and they won’t need data science degrees or machine learning expertise to be effective. It’s a revolutionary shift in terms of how people can use technology as a power tool.”
The survey indicates that while genAI will inspire new adoptions, it will also lead to substantial workforce changes. Organizations are more inclined towards reskilling than cutting back on their workforce. Most respondents predict extensive reskilling initiatives, with around 40% believing more than a fifth of their workforce will undergo this transformation.
But while genAI might boost automation, it doesn’t necessarily mean job cuts across the board. Service operations seem to be the only department expected to witness a significant drop in headcount due to genAI. Interestingly, although genAI's introduction has amped up the automation potential of worker activities, it only translates into the automation of some roles.
Delving deeper into genAI’s potential applications, Yee concludes, “We’re mainly seeing companies that are leaning forward with generative AI, focusing on pragmatic areas where the routes to improvements in top-line growth or productivity are clearest. Examples include using generative AI tools to help modernize legacy code or speed up research and discovery time in the sciences. We’re still just scratching the surface of these augmentation capabilities, and we can anticipate that their use will accelerate.”
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