AI : the rapidly adopted black c(h)at

Despite the deep fear it initially aroused, the arrival of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has above all enabled AI’s adoption in organisations with breathtaking speed. Too fast to take the bend safely?

By Kevin Erkeletyan

The first time we heard about Artificial Intelligence (AI) was in films and books. In general, it was a scary thought, but seemed very distant. And then AI got closer: it invaded our GPS, our search engines, our music streaming apps, called itself Siri, made itself useful and reassuring, sometimes even funny, without us really knowing what it was all about. For several years, AI remained a “black box”, as it was called by several of the managers and researchers we interviewed. Until the box opened on 30 November 2022.

THE FEAR FACTOR

That day, ChatGPT – the flagship of generative AI – arrived and immediately revealed its true colours: a revolution in the relationship between the user and AI. “ChatGPT’s success lies in its chat: an accessible, easy-to-use interface,” says AVISIA Deputy CEO Pascal Bizzari. This time, AI was close, but had now become scary again: “People could try it out for themselves and do a little research, and they saw it had an answer for everything,” continues the partner at the AI consultancy. “Many thought this new tool could potentially do things in their place.”

Less than two years later, “75% of knowledge workers are using AI at work” and “46% of them have started doing so in the last six months” according to Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trends Index Report. AI is becoming commonplace at the speed of a neural connection, accompanied by two fears pinpointed by Eneric Lopez, who leads Microsoft’s national AI plan: “Firstly, there’s the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which affects both individuals and organisations. Secondly there’s the FOBO (Fear Of Becoming Obsolete), which reflects the dread of being replaced by AI in one way or another.”

AI has taken root in the corporate world. At Roquette, a world leader in plant-based ingredients and pharmaceutical excipients, Pierre-Louis Bescond talks about “commoditisation”: “We have introduced self-service solutions. In the same way that you give all your employees access to Office, you can have access to RoqueGPT, a complete AI platform,” says the Head of Data & Advanced Analytics. “We put it on the shelf like other digital solutions. Everyone needs to be able to use it.” The SKEMA alumnus could assess the adoption rate when there was a breakdown: “A few weeks ago, the RoqueGPT solution went down for a few hours. It’s the first time I’ve seen staff come up to the data team and say, “Have you realised that this isn’t working?’” he smiles. “Some even wondered how they were going to manage, although they’d been working without it for 20 years. A lot of people got used to it very quickly.”

PROMPTLY ENSCONCED

This democratisation at record speed goes hand in hand with new demands. At Malakoff Humanis, AI product manager Jean-Baptiste Girardin comes up against fantasies about generative AI”s capabilities – “everyone comes to us convinced that everything can be automated” – at the same time as a desire for perfection. “There’s a real cultural change,” he says. “Five years ago, when we presented a model with 65-70% accuracy, everyone thought it was amazing. Since ChatGPT, people are almost disappointed when we reach 90%.” More broadly, at AVISIA, this “upheaval” has called for a form of restructuring: a collective approach to requalify Ai, and an “adaptation of skills to respond to new customer issues.”

But AI is not just a technological opportunity. Pierre-Louis talks about the attractiveness for the younger generation of a company that is already mature in this respect. The SKEMA barometer on the aspirations of young talents in 2024 also reflects this attitude: two-thirds of them expect to use AI in their first job. LinkedIn, another job market barometer, confirms this trend: on the social network, the Microsoft report “notes a 142-fold increase in the number of members adding AI skills to their prof iles.”