A growing gap between expectations and reality seems to be causing UK business leaders to tune out of the hype around Generative AI. While a recent report from Accenture has sought to convince bosses that Britain has “more to gain” from the technology than any other G7 economy, another from CreateFeature suggests the majority of leaders do not see it as a priority.

After the initial public release of Chat GPT – the generative artificial intelligence which remains the dominant force in the market, and underwrites many of the tools developed in the years since – business leaders and the media were happy to get swept up in the hype. Hype which most recently has seen consulting firm Accenture claim that GenAI could almost double the UK’s economic growth.

According to the latest study from Accenture, this would mean that the UK has more to gain from GenAI than any other G7 economy. Average annual gross domestic product for 2023 to 2038 could rise from 1.6% to 3%, according to Accenture’s forecasting.

The consultancy estimated that much of this would result from huge productivity boosts, brought about by GenAI’s potential to complete administrative tasks quickly – opening up time for ‘value adding’ activities of human labour, who could also be supported in their work by the technology.

Accenture said it analysed tens of thousands of detailed tasks and estimated the total time that could be saved from automation, or augmentation which supports human tasks with technology. For GDP modelling, the firm said it analysed the impact if people reallocated time freed up towards tasks that are less prone to using AI.

More specifically, the firm’s modelling suggested that the average worker could save 18% of their working hours spent on routine activities. For example, Accenture claimed that in the public sector, a doctor could save up to five working hours a week.

Commenting on the firm’s estimations, Shaheen Sayed, head of Accenture in the UK, Ireland and Africa, said, “There is an enormous opportunity to address longstanding productivity stagnation in the UK through an ambitious roll-out of generative AI, but organisations already risk falling behind with a short-term view of the power of this technology.”

However, the report also illustrated a key change in the marketing around AI – in that it’s apparently limitless potential is being marketed to the public sector, where Accenture said it could be felt most keenly. This may be in part because many private firms simply aren’t biting anymore.

Expectations vs Reality

Illustrating this, new research commissioned by digital consultancy CreateFuture has found that 58% of UK business decision-makers do not currently view AI adoption as a ‘strategic priority right now’. On top of that, 38% also admitted they still lack a clear AI vision or strategy. Even among those companies that do have an AI strategy in place, 43% admit that they are only in their early stages.

The research saw over 1,000 UK-based business decision-makers giving their opinions on the barriers holding their AI adoption journey back. And chief among those was the cost of implementation – with 86% saying the high price of implementation was currently a deterrent for investing in GenAI.

Jeff Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at CreateFuture, commented, “If adopted correctly AI can be a truly transformative technology which can unleash huge value and opportunities for organisations – with the potential to do the same for the UK economy at large. Unfortunately, our findings suggest that when it comes to AI adoption, the UK’s business community could be in danger of missing a huge growth opportunity due to a lack of vision, strategy and prioritisation in its boardrooms, with a lack of skills and in-house expertise also threatening to compound these factors.”

But almost three years into the AI experiment, how long the nascent industry can keep trading on its ‘potential’ or ‘opportunities’ rather than results is up for discussion. With leading models still failing to eradicate the risks of ‘hallucinations’ (euphemisms for ‘mistakes’), as each new version of things like ChatGPT become less differentiated from their predecessors while demanding more energy, some businesses will inevitably begin to lose patience – especially when many publicly known cases of AI excitement and reality do not add up.

In late October, for example, Microsoft claimed that “AI is on pace to be a $10 billion-a-year business”. But considering that figure includes services it already offered such as cloud compute services on Azure, now placed under the AI umbrella, and that Microsoft’s capital expenditures will likely hit over $60 billion in 2024, one of the world’s leading businesses seems to be offering a high profile example of why firms ought not to believe the hype.

Circling back to the CreateFuture findings, the low levels of priority given to AI may be indicative of a distrust in GenAI’s ability to deliver profit, then. With the cost of borrowing still at higher levels, inflation eating into profits of many companies, and uncertainty around the future of the technology’s biggest players (from NVIDIA’s unstable share price, to the slowing of investment in many leading AI developers), now may not be seen as the right time to bet the house on an unproven technology.