In October 2024, PwC conducted a study Pulse SurveyNearly half (49%) of technology leaders said AI is “fully integrated” into their companies' core business strategy. In turn, a third of respondents indicated that AI is already fully integrated into the products and services offered. It should be borne in mind that this study was conducted among representatives of American companies, however, the forecasts presented by PwC regarding the role of AI in organizations can help to relate foreign trends to the realities of the Polish labor market. The PwC report aims to show possible AI scenarios in business over the next 12 months.
Productivity, efficiency... what else?
The incorporation of artificial intelligence into the ecosystem of a company today is mainly associated with increasing efficiency, efficiency and productivity. We treat AI as a tool to speed up processes and easily search for information, it is also a way of automation, thanks to which things “do themselves” and do not even need the support of specialized personnel.
AI did not stop at a level that today - in retrospect - seems quite primitive. It is developing faster than the Internet at the time of its creation (in 1983), and for this it performs much more complex and demanding tasks. Depending on the model used, artificial intelligence can, for example, reason on its own and refer to its own mistakes. This is a huge leap in its development, which shows that AI can be used, among others, to design new services or strategies for their implementation on the market.
According to the recommendations presented in the PwC study, it is crucial for companies to embed AI in the operational structure of the organization - to include it as a full-fledged work tool. According to experts, this approach can not only improve the functioning of the company, but also give it a competitive advantage.
Another suggestion from PwC is to think of the use of AI in the company as a portfolio consisting of three types of projects. These are: Ground game (basic activities), Roofshots (projects with a medium level of ambition) and Moonshots (projects with a high level of ambition).
Ground game: At this basic level, the idea is for AI to perform small tasks in different areas of the company's business. Although individually these are small actions, together they translate into greater efficiency and many small successes. Examples of such tasks are: analyzing and matching offers to customers, translating texts, taking notes from meetings or writing emails.
Roofshots: At this stage, AI is already performing more complex, design tasks. For example, it can support the creation of personalized customer service operating 24/7, design interfaces of new applications or support the HR department in the recruitment process.
Moonshots: This is the most ambitious and advanced level of use of AI, in which artificial intelligence is involved in making strategic decisions, designing solutions that were previously beyond the reach of human capabilities, and even becomes the foundation of the operation of the entire organization.
AI is already present in every sector, as Matt Wood (PwC US and Global Commercial Technology & Innovation Officer) mentioned in his statement:
The deployment of AI is progressing at a rapid pace at PwC and with customers in every sector. 2025 will bring significant advances in quality, accuracy, capability and automation that will overlap, accelerating towards a period of exponential growth
Recommendations
The PwC report contains numerous recommendations for the practical application of AI tools in companies. This is important because it is not enough to simply choose one of the projects from the “portfolio” — it is crucial to analyze the situation of your own organization in advance in order to be able to adapt the solution to its needs and capabilities. Otherwise, a chaotic, ill-considered implementation of AI can bring more confusion and organizational problems than real benefits. It is worth asking yourself auxiliary questions: what can artificial intelligence do for your business? In which places will it reduce costs and where will it create new value? Can it improve customer service, increase revenue, or help create new products or services?
Does AI have to have all of your company's data? It depends on what exactly you want to improve and what deployment model you choose. But in order for it to have arms and legs, it is worth initially focusing on one department of the organization. This can be, for example, the recruitment department or the accounting department - preferably the one that is most burdened. Provide AI with data from this area so it can help streamline processes and really relieve people at work.
The last, but very important point is to supervise the work of AI - it is about checking on an ongoing basis whether the implemented project actually works. This can be assessed on the basis of, for example, revenue, efficiency and pace of work of teams or customer ratings. Such a critical analysis allows you to change the model of action or approach to working with AI, if necessary, before it starts to do more harm than good.
Will AI double the workforce? One of the controversial conclusions of PwC researchers is that artificial intelligence will be a collaborator and not a new employee in the company who has replaced several others. They are referred to as “digital workers”, that is, AI agents and perform repetitive and time-consuming tasks. According to the authors of the report, such an AI agent can:
- respond to routine customer questions,
- prepare the first versions of the code,
- make preliminary versions of projects based on the ideas of man.
In theory, the team gets more time for tasks that require creativity, and at the same time still plays an important role: supervises the work of AI, combines results from different areas, gives instructions. Sounds optimistic, doesn't it? However, this forecast can be questioned and compared with other data — e.g. from the same US market.
IN Financial Times article has just been published “Wealthy cities may be surprised losers from AI automation”, which shows another side of this phenomenon. The authors diagnose that:
- Replacing humans with AI will geographically dispersed — it will not be limited to just one type of place;
- Wealthier cities on the east and west coasts of the US, which previously benefited from industrial automation, can now be more vulnerable to digital “dislocation”;
- The consequences will not only be economic, but social and political — AI automation can hit harder affluent urban centers than in poorer rural regionsand, consequently, in traditionally Democratic states more than Republican.
How will it be in practice?
It is certainly not worth giving up AI completely — its use has become everyday, and by applying it in a thoughtful way, we have a chance to become a more competitive organization. What is worth remembering, of course, is the ethics of new technology. Like any new creation, AI carries both positive and negative consequences for the workplace — and where possible, we should prevent the most serious ones.
Sources:
- https://www.pwc.com/us/en/tech-effect/ai-analytics/ai-predictions.html#your-ai-strategy-will-put-you-ahead--or-make-it-hard-to-ever-catch-up
- https://www.ft.com/content/04343a69-8204-493c-b8c6-edfbd4057199
