Ripples of Innovation and New Business Needs from GenAI’s Splash

Investment into AI ramped up fast with the likes of Accenture committing to extensive backing of the space. “There was an arms race to say how much they were investing,” says David Cushman, executive research leader with HFS Research. A massive explosion of announcements in 2023, he says, came from companies doing deals to demonstrate how they meant to play in this arena. Last summer, Accenture declared its plans to invest $3 billion and to double its AI staff from 40,000 to 80,000 globally.

“Across the whole market, we saw 50, 60, 70 [press] releases in three months of people saying, ‘We’ve done a deal with Google; we’ve done deal with Microsoft; we’ve done a deal with OpenAI,’ with just such massive excitement about it,” Cushman says. He compares the possibly historic spread of this technology, growing so far so quickly, with Web 2.0.

Among other areas, Cushman sees a wave of new businesses emerging that use natural language to build apps, such as Bitmagic and AI21 Labs. “Bitmagic you can use text to create a game — prompt a game into existence,” he says. “Those are already with us.” A second wave is coming, Cushman says, where natural language will be used to interact with and train applications, such as Rabbit and its forthcoming R1, AI assistant device. The interaction with AI could become something like a series of digital nesting dolls training each other. “That’s actually using apps to train other apps to create another app,” he says.

A third wave, Cushman says, may include using natural language to create agents, called agentic AI systems, which could operate with little supervision to fulfill complex tasks.

As more companies embrace AI, there may be questions about the technology’s ethics and how it might be governed within an organization, which may lead to a need for help with ethics as a service. “How should AI behave in order to not be biased? How should AI behave in order not to swear at people?” Cushman asks. A response emerging from service providers, he says, is to set up a responsible AI office to monitor legislation and changes coming down the line that could impact this space. Cushman also says some providers might offer responsible AI as a service; however, he questions putting such duties in a third party’s hands, digital or otherwise. “I think you should own your own ethics,” he says. “You certainly shouldn’t expect a machine to learn your ethics. That’s kind of crazy.”