Growing Up: Navigating Generative AI’s Early Years – AI Adoption Report
AI at Wharton has partnered with GBK Collective to produce Growing Up: Navigating Gen AI’s Early Years. This is an extensively researched report that provides an in-depth analysis of the state of Generative AI (Gen AI) adoption, its business applications, and future prospects. Written by Jeremy Korst, Partner, GBK Collective, Stefano Puntoni, Faculty Co-Director of AI at Wharton, and Mary Purk, Executive Director of AI at Wharton, this report comes at a critical moment in AI’s evolution, as companies transition from initial excitement to deeper experimentation and efforts to prove the Return on Investment (ROI).
As newness and amazement temper and more companies adopt Gen AI, the dialog has shifted to experimentation and proving ROI.
2023: Trial
- 37% reported using Gen AI at least once a week.
- Gen AI spending was predicted to increase 25%.
- Gen AI users were Optimistic, Excited, and many are Impressed but Cautious. Non-Users were mostly Curious and Cautious.
- There was strong optimism for Gen AI adoption: 78% average likelihood of integrating Gen AI across business functions, with top use cases in Data Analysis, Content Creation, and Research & Insights.
2024: Experimentation
- 72% report using Gen AI at least once a week.
- Gen AI spending increased by 130% since 2023.
- After 12 months of increased experimentation and usage, Gen AI users are Pleased and Excited, and less Amazed and Curious, along with negative perceptions softening.
- On average, 55% currently use Gen AI across business functions. Of those, 58% rated the performance of these use cases as ‘Great’. Users may focus their adoption based on successful trial outcomes.
2025+: Adoption & Deployment
- 72% say Gen AI budgets will increase in the next year, most over $5 million.
- However, a majority (57%) anticipate spending increases to slow (+1 – 10%).
- Slowing growth is perhaps an indicator that enterprises are still searching for the ROI on their initial investment.
- Future focus may be on the right internal investments and organization structures to support Gen AI.
Gen AI adoption has surged, nearly doubling across functional areas in one year.
Among survey respondents, the top uses for Gen AI include document and proposal writing/editing, data analysis, and document/meeting summarization.
“The biggest impact of Gen AI will be to augment my capabilities. [It will] automate routine tasks and provide 24/7 support to our customers, freeing me up to focus on [customer] empathy and more complex problem-solving.”
—Banking Leader, $100M – $250M Annual Revenue
More and more companies are using Gen AI across functions.
“Our productivity has certainly increased since we started using [Gen AI]. I’m amazed by its power; AI is changing not only my company, it’s already changing the world.”
—Tech/Telecom Leader, $1B – $2B Annual Revenue
Key Takeaways and Recommendations
Gen AI is still in the early phase. As with previous major advances in technologies (e.g., PCs, the Internet), Gen AI is currently being used to improve the efficiencies of business processes. It takes time for companies and industries to fully take advantage of the new tools, assess the right tools and
platforms, and re-engineer their processes and develop new capabilities based on the new tech.
Short-term investment may be cooling, but this is not to be seen as a lack of interest. Investment in Gen AI remains strong, signaling that while maybe not immediately, many industries are preparing to embrace a world in which Gen AI plays a big role.
Remain vigilant, continue experimenting, watch for major developments, and be ready to follow quickly with investment as successful use cases become known. The companies that are prepared to pivot to Gen AI when the technology matures are going to be more competitive and agile. Companies that aren’t treating this as a transformative technology could be caught flat-footed.
Have an open mind on which vendors are the best on Gen AI because best may soon be relative. Microsoft and OpenAI still appear to carry a first-mover advantage in decision-makers’ minds. However, as Gen AI develops past the experimentation phase, other providers (including lesserknown players) will start to specialize their capabilities within certain industries or use cases. It’s not hard to imagine providers diverging to claim an edge in niche areas.
Download the report
