How do you harness the power of generative AI? Let me count the ways

As business leaders, we're constantly seeking new ways to leverage technology to drive impact and unlock fresh opportunities.

One area that's creating a lot of excitement right now is generative AI, a set of technologies that use machine learning to create new content or insights (e.g. code, text, images) that didn't previously exist.

Generative AI is a powerful tool that can be applied in many different contexts , from creating draft marketing plans to improving product design and supply chain efficiency.

At QuantumBlack and McKinsey, we’re super-excited about generative AI’s potential to drive significant business impact. But driving that impact requires a deep understanding of the technology and the business context in which it will be used.

The world of generative AI is far broader than any one tool or application.

There are already meaningfully different tools that are suited for different contexts, and dozens of firms that are deploying analogous technology tuned for different applications. And we’re still in the early innings of this transformational trend. We need to lean forward, but also be wary of the hype cycle.

Many firms may tout generative AI technology as the “shiny object” or “silver bullet” but clarity on where it is applicable or not will be very nuanced and the trend will play out over a course of years, much as has been the case with other transformational trends like cloud and mobile.

And, importantly, getting value from any flavor of generative AI requires a multidisciplinary approach.

We're leveraging our historical capabilities, organic investments, and M&A strategy to help our clients build the supportive AI skills, cloud technology, modern data infrastructure and change management programs that will bring the power of generative AI to bear.

Within the AI space, we have built a community of thousands of technical colleagues (including data scientists, software and data engineers and product managers) to deliver sustainable client impact and growth as well as innovations like Kedro.

We've also made investments in MLOps tools and platforms to manage AI in a manner that reduces risk, ensures fidelity, and continuously improves and maintains models in production—welcome, again, to the Iguazio team who’ve upped our game even further in this area!

Another key for harnessing generative AI is cloud technology .

Without the compute power enabled by the cloud, the tools and bandwidth to deploy generative AI will be significantly dampened.

That's why, through organic investments and our 2021 acquisition of Candid Partners, we have 450+ cloud architects, developers, and engineers.

Adaptable data infrastructure is yet another crucial factor in harnessing the power of generative AI. The lifeblood of generative AI is fluid access to data honed for the particular business context.

For sensitive data, guardrails, protections, and usage will need to be carefully architected and managed. I’m grateful that we have over 400+ data engineers to help on this front, and our 2022 investment in Caserta, a pioneering data architecture and engineering firm, gives us even greater ability to ensure the relevant data architecture is in place to fuel generative AI.

Beyond our internal capabilities, we’re also building an ecosystem of generative AI partners, across disruptors and hyper scalers, to ensure we can help businesses find the most suitable solution for their particular problems and business contexts.

Toward this end, for example, we recently formed a partnership with Stanford University where many of the leading AI thinkers reside and continue to lead. We’ll be sharing more about such partnerships in the days and months to come.?

Finally, we have learned many times over that implementing and getting real impact from any new technology like generative AI requires change management, particularly on the front lines. We keep this at the forefront given historical challenges with “last mile” adoption and impact .

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Generative AI is an exciting and transformative technology that has the potential to drive significant business impact. However, to harness its power, businesses need to develop a multi-disciplinary approach that leverages cloud technology, adaptable data infrastructure, a deep understanding of the technology and business context and change management. At McKinsey, we're thrilled to be working with our clients to develop these capabilities and unlock the full potential of generative AI.