Growing Up: Navigating Generative AI’s Early Years – AI Adoption Report

From “curiosity” and “amazement” to “pleased” and “excited”

From a survey with more than 800 senior business leaders, this report’s findings indicate that weekly usage of Gen AI has nearly doubled from 37% in 2023 to 72% in 2024, with significant growth in previously slower-adopting departments like Marketing and HR. Despite this increased usage, businesses still face challenges in determining the full impact and ROI of Gen AI. Sentiment reports indicate leaders have shifted from feelings of “curiosity” and “amazement” to more positive sentiments like “pleased” and “excited,” and concerns about AI replacing jobs have softened. Participants were full-time employees working in large commercial organizations with 1,000 or more employees.

https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/focus-areas/human-technology-interaction/2024-ai-adoption-report/

What makes a great manager of software engineers?

Cultivates, motivates, mediates

• availability
• give autonomy
• support experimentation
• set clear ways to do things

Kalliamvakou, E., Bird, C., Zimmermann, T., Begel, A., DeLine, R., & German, D. M. (2017). What makes a great manager of software engineers?. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 45(1), 87-106.

Why Is Anything Conscious?

It really makes you think

“Consciousness is a necessary adaptation, and a philosophical zombie is impossible.”

Bennett, M. T., Welsh, S., & Ciaunica, A. (2024). Why Is Anything Conscious?. arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.14545.

The Rise of Cloud Repatriation

How could it be repatriated if it never left?

“Ten years into that journey, GEICO still hadn’t migrated everything to the cloud, their bills went up 2.5x, and their reliability challenges went up quite a lot too.”

“The future isn’t about choosing between cloud and on-premises but making informed decisions based on specific business needs, workload characteristics, and economic factors. Whether an organization stays in the cloud, moves to on-premises, or adopts a hybrid approach should depend on their unique circumstances rather than following industry trends.”

https://thenewstack.io/why-companies-are-ditching-the-cloud-the-rise-of-cloud-repatriation/

Reader Feedback

“What’s the right amount of investment into AI, which we don’t know for sure if it’s going to work versus cleaning up the damn data — which we know will.”

Footnotes

The holiday reading included a volume on life in the 14th Century, A Distant Mirror, by Barbara W. Tuchman, and some follow up reading about institutions in The Narrow Corridor. We’re still figuring out how we want to work with agents just as we haven’t really figured out how we want to work with each other. Looking back, I’m thankful that I don’t find myself in the 1300’s, on either side of the plague. Looking ahead, I wonder how life can be somewhat better.

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