Only 20% of IT Leaders Using Generative AI: Survey

Dataiku, the Universal AI Platform, has unveiled new survey findings that reveal a significant gap between businesses’ investments in Generative AI and the ability of senior IT professionals to operationalize these investments at scale. Despite recognizing the potential of Generative AI, only 20% of senior IT leaders are currently using it in production.

The survey, conducted in April 2024, gathered insights from 200 senior analytics and IT leaders at enterprise companies worldwide. The results underscore several challenges hindering the widespread adoption of Generative AI:

– Investment vs. Operationalization: While nearly three-quarters (73%) of IT leaders plan to invest more than $500,000 in Generative AI over the next 12 months, and around half (46%) will spend over $1 million, operationalizing these investments remains a challenge.

– Inadequate Tools: Nearly half (44%) of the respondents reported that their current data tools do not meet their analytics and AI needs, and 43% stated their data analytics stack falls short of modern infrastructure standards. Moreover, 88% lack specific tools or processes for managing large language models (LLMs).

– Tool Overload: The majority (60%) of IT leaders use more than five tools for each step in the analytics process, from data ingestion to MLOps and LLMOps. However, 71% expressed a preference for using five or fewer tools to simplify scaling projects.

– Governance and Risk: A significant portion (74%) of respondents still rely on spreadsheets for quick analyses, leading to operational risks. Additionally, 62% have faced serious issues due to spreadsheet errors.

– Data Quality: Data quality and usability are the biggest challenges for 45% of IT leaders, with data access issues cited by 27% of respondents. These issues persist despite the high number of tools in their data stack.

Conor Jensen, Field CDO of Dataiku, commented on the survey findings: “The reality is that Generative AI will continue to shift and evolve, with different technologies and providers coming and going. How can IT leaders get in the game while also staying agile to what’s next? All eyes are on whether this challenge — in addition to spiraling costs and other risks — will eclipse the value production of Generative AI. Our survey reveals most data stacks are not built to meet these needs.”

To address these challenges, Dataiku has launched several initiatives to help enterprises reshape their data and analytics stacks:

– Embedded Data Quality Infrastructure: Dataiku’s new as-you-go data quality infrastructure aims to allow everyone within an organization to effectively operationalize data quality across the analytics and AI lifecycle.

– LLM Mesh Expansion: The expansion includes a Generative AI cost monitoring solution and tools to build tailored conversational AI chatbots, enabling organizations to responsibly scale AI transformation.