While a majority of companies are using AI to varying degrees but not yet seeing significant impact, two subsets — publicly traded firms and early adopters — are significantly ahead of the pack.
In a survey of 1,735 executives around the world, 27% said generative AI technologies are “mostly” or “extensively” providing them with a strategic advantage. However, the proportion rose to 38% among respondents representing the sample’s 361 public companies.
In fact, the publicly held cohort reported better results than even the largest companies (those with annual revenue of at least $1 billion), for which the corresponding figure was just 28%. Curiously, those large companies aren’t faring much better than the group of smallest companies (with revenue of less than $10 million), which weighed in at 25%.
The research was performed by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, an alliance of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the global Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.
The biggest winners of all are the 453 companies AICPA and CIMA identified as “AI-transformed entities,” among which 73% said AI is mostly or extensively providing a strategic advantage.
However, while those organizations are gaining strategic momentum, they’re also facing escalating pressure to manage emerging risks. For example, 54% of them said they were mostly or extensively worried that competitors may leverage AI more effectively, compared with 30% of the full sample and 38% of the publicly traded companies.
Board-level attention is also higher at the early adopters, with 65% of survey participants reporting that AI risk is a focus for their board, again compared with 30% of the full survey base.
“Executive teams and boards must recognize that AI’s benefits and risks rise in tandem,” said Mark Beasley, director of the Enterprise Risk Management Initiative at North Carolina State University. “This research underscores that organizations with a disciplined approach to readiness are pulling ahead in measurable ways.”
Geographically, executives from North America and Europe, which comprised a combined 60% of the surveyed executives, reported far less strategic impact than those in six other studied regions.
The alliance’s survey report noted that, unlike North America and Europe, where businesses often have entrenched processes and infrastructure, companies in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia/New Zealand “may be in a better position to integrate AI without the added burden of existing outdated systems.”
Among industries, generative AI is benefiting mining far more than any other, with 48% of executives giving high ratings on strategy impact, compared with 30% in the full sample of respondents.
Mining is ripe for AI because of the technologies’ role in predictive analytics and operational efficiency, according to the survey report. The industry has high-value use cases with immediate ROI, such as autonomous haulage, computer vision safety monitoring, ore body modeling, and predictive maintenance on mission-critical equipment, the alliance wrote.
