#ai-adoption

#ai-adoption

Organizations are scrambling to keep up with employees using AI tools like ChatGPT, text generators, and automation platforms to help them at work. The phenomenon is known as Bring Your Own AI. And while workers are hitting performance goals faster, they're also exposing companies to unprecedented legal and security risks.

Almost half of respondents to Ocient's "From Roadmap to Reality" report say that their companies have not experienced meaningful revenue growth from artificial intelligence (AI) investments due to "poor data quality and overtaxed infrastructures." The data analytics firm further found that "security and compliance pressures" are "shaping enterprise deployment strategies that prioritize flexibility and cost savings, driving movement away from the cloud."

During a fireside chat at LinkedIn's San Francisco office on Tuesday, Ryan Roslansky said using AI is like "having a second brain" that knows him "extremely well." It's why AI is helpful almost every time he sends important emails to his boss, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "A lot of the time when I'm sending a super high-stakes email to Satya Nadella or other CEOs or world leaders or etcetera, you've got to make sure you sound super smart when you do that," Roslansky said.

If you've got an enterprise-level Microsoft 365 Business Structured Account, you probably have a lot more in that than you realise. But remember: the AI is simply a copilot, not the pilot.

said there is an enormous gap in the market for "AI integrators" - people who can adapt AI tools for practical use inside corporations. "There are 33 million companies in this country," Cuban noted, "and only a select few have dedicated AI budgets or keep AI experts on payroll. But these companies will still need to adapt for the AI era.

Want a crystal ball into the future of Wall Street? You might try starting with Goldman Sachs' annual intern survey. Goldman polled around 2,100 summer analysts and associates for its 10th annual intern survey, asking about everything from AI use to morning commutes to their homebuying ambitions. Technology dominated the topics covered in this year's survey, with close to 100% of respondents saying they use AI in their personal lives, up from 86% in 2023.

The real AI story in most organizations isn't about algorithms; it's about habits. New tools arrive with impressive demonstrations and confident promises, yet the day-to-day routines that decide what gets attention, who can take a risk, and what counts as a "good job" tend to remain the same. Leaders set up special units, roll out training, or look for quick savings, only to find that the old culture quietly resets the terms. When that happens, early gains fade, adoption stalls, and cynicism grows.

Junior talent is very willing to try new tools," he said. "The younger you are, usually the more agile you are at adopting a new playbook and figuring it out.

If you're here, you're likely asking: "Where can AI really make a difference in my day-to-day work, without compromising quality or trust?" We understand that when your service business is built on deep expertise, judgment calls, and tight deadlines, the answer can make or break your operations. That's why, in this blog post, we'll show you concrete use cases of AI in professional services industry, from consulting analysis to legal research, financial auditing, and client delivery.

First, its primary focus is investing in upskilling people, next it will "exiting people in a compressed timeline where reskilling is not a viable path for the skills it needs," and third it will identify areas to drive more operating efficiencies. Sweet said on the subsequent earnings call that Accenture expects savings of more than $1 billion from its business optimization program, which the company says will be invested into the business and its people.

Many companies investing in AI are "unsure" how it will make them more efficient - but employees should still adapt to the tech or risk falling behind, a workplace guru has said. "So far it looks like AI is a great culprit for job and cost cutting, especially in tech firms," Thomas Roulet, a professor of organizational sociology and leadership at the University of Cambridge, told Business Insider. But the anticipated efficiency gain from AI hasn't "fully materialized," and "many firms betting on AI are unsure how this gain will materialize," Roulet said.

After discovering that its own employees were timid about using AI in the workplace, enterprise software giant Workday spearheaded a program to encourage adoption. Ashley Goldsmith, Workday's chief people officer, recently spoke with HR Brew about that initiative, and how her own team is using AI. Adoption boost. Internal research revealed that Workday employees weren't using AI tools because they weren't clear on the appropriate use cases.

Quiet Cracking: Silent Burnout in the Office Unlike " the great detachment", quiet cracking occurs when individuals continue to perform while silently burning out. They attend meetings, meet deadlines, and carry on, but under the surface, stress and exhaustion are eroding their well-being. The numbers tell the story: 90% of workers say their stress is the same or worse than last year. 47% worry about job stability. The average daily commute is now 62 minutes.

It's another finding that illustrates both the pitfalls of rapid AI adoption, as well as the outrageous outpouring of hype that drowns out criticisms of the tech in business circles. Many companies have gambled on replacing their employees with AI agents, only to eat crow when the tech falls flat and they're forced to rehire humans. One MIT study found that an embarrassing 95 percent of companies that incorporated AI saw no meaningful growth in revenue.

Your company has rolled out AI like it's a new office uniform. Everyone's using it. And unlike most uniforms, people are using it even when they are told not to. As a result, your inbox clears itself, your reports write themselves, and meetings collapse into neat little summaries at the click of a button. You may be even be fantasizing about sending your digital clone to those pointless meetings, and perhaps your colleagues have done so already (which may explain their perfect attendance record).

Euan Blair, Founder and CEO of Multiverse, said the rise of this "invisible" AI workforce shows the crucial role non-tech professions are playing in broader adoption rates. "Clinicians and council workers are just as integral to driving AI adoption as software engineers and data analysts," he said. "They are the ones finding practical ways to apply this technology to real-world problems, yet they're often a second order consideration."

But Brian O'Kelley, the tech founder who sold AppNexus to AT&T for $1.6 billion in 2018, has a message for Jamie Dimon, Andy Jassy, and any CEO demanding a return to the office: You're not serious about AI. The 48-year-old serial entrepreneur has worked in tech for the past two decades. He's currently building his third startup, Scope3, a supply-chain emissions data company. And O'Kelley argues that return-to-office mandates mark the line between companies that are truly preparing for an AI-first future-and those stuck in the past.

Last week, the online freelance marketplace Fiverr generated a flood of headlines after it announced an effort to reimagine itself as an " AI-first" company. According to a published memo from CEO Micha Kaufman, the new-and-improved Fiverr will be "leaner, faster," with modern AI infrastructure, greater productivity, and "far fewer management layers." The change will also require a "painful reset," Kaufman added, that will see 250 people lose their jobs.

AI is well and truly here, and many freelancers may be concerned about AI taking over their work and losing clientele. In fact, McKinsey research found that, by 2030, up to 30% of hours worked across the US could be automated using AI. Of course, the level of AI adoption will vary across different industries and occupations. However, it's crucial for all freelancers to upskill themselves for the inevitability of AI impacting their industry-whether it's a small impact or a significant shift.

Today's leaders face a paradox: the incredible speed of change in the workplace, alongside a deep human need for connection, which requires courage and vulnerability. Brown explained that we can choose to be on "team technology" or "team human," but "the future will belong to those of us who can straddle the paradox of humanity and technology." Both are needed, she affirmed.

Now, Honig is bringing her innovation-first mindset to Samsung in the newly created role that puts her at the helm of the tech giant's customer experience and AI transformation. Her remit? Help customers understand how they can use AI more day-to-day. "I believe we are going through the most exciting phases of change in our history," she adds. "The AI revolution is one of the most important technological shifts we'll experience in our lifetime."

That dream might be creeping out of reach for younger people trying to break into the industry, which looks to be on the cusp of a big shift as firms trim their ranks, double down on AI, and tighten performance standards across the career ladder, industry analysts told Business Insider. No one is exactly sure how it will play out, as much of the future will depend on where the economy goes and how quickly AI is adopted.

Companies large and small are scrambling to implement AI in hopes of boosting productivity, while many are also stripping out the very leadership backbone needed to guide that change: managers. That's a dangerous contradiction. AI adoption won't fail because of the platform a company chooses. It will fail if the people employees trust most, their managers, aren't equipped to understand artificial intelligence, or if those roles disappear altogether.

I was standing in the back saying, 'No, we're engineering, and engineering does all the work. And that's the hardest part, to actually write the code.' And then as I thought about it throughout the day, I was like, actually, writing code, we know how to do that, and it's getting easier and easier using AI. But it is, in fact, the change management.

For the first time this summer, it's now soft skills. It's human skills; it's things like problem solving, judgement, creativity, taste.

A backend nerve center for the government with procurement, technology and real estate duties that cross agencies, GSA was an early stronghold for the controversial DOGE effort. Tech billionaire and then-DOGE head Elon Musk himself visited the agency in January. DOGE associates were even spending nights in a GSA building in D.C., although during Ehikian's first town hall at the agency, he told employees that there was no DOGE team at GSA when asked about the efficiency group.

Markets got a shock in late August from an unlikely place: a survey by MIT finding that 95% of generative AI pilots at large companies were failing. That prompted a tech sell-off and talk of whether AI was forming into a stock-market bubble. And another piece of the puzzle just fell into view: the Census Bureau finds that AI adoption rates are starting to decline among major firms.

The report found the best-performing companies are driving better outcomes with a more transparent structure, smarter systems and practical uses of AI. They align on specific outcomes, shared metrics, and consistent operating rhythms- not just strategy slides or campaign goals. Rather than launching disconnected pilots, the report found leading companies use embedded, role-based AI to guide content usage, improve coaching and act in real time.

While the general trend is upwards, there's been a decline in the use of AI for companies with more than 250 employees. That cohort is the group most likely to use AI, according to the bureau, peaking just shy of 14% and falling back down to 12% over summer surveys. While this represents a small - and perhaps temporary - decline, it does suggest some degree of hesitation on the part of large enterprises, some of which are growing frustrated at poor returns on investment.