GenAI to create transformational business benefits within 2-5 yrs: Gartner

Generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, is forecasted to bring about transformational business benefits within the next 2-5 years. It has reached the 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' on the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2023. GenAI falls under the broader theme of emergent AI, a key trend in this hype cycle that is opening new avenues for innovation.

"The impact of many new AI techniques on business and society will be profound," observed Arun Chandrasekaran, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. "The extensive pretraining and scaling of AI foundation models, the viral uptake of conversational agents, and the spread of generative AI applications are signalling a fresh wave of workforce productivity and machine creativity."

Melissa Davis, VP Analyst at Gartner, added, "While the focus is predominantly on AI at the moment, Chief Information Officers and Chief Technology Officers must also shift their attention towards other nascent technologies that hold transformational potential. This encompasses technologies that are improving the developer experience, fuelling innovation through the ubiquitous cloud, and ensuring human-centric security and privacy."

Davis further noted, "As the technologies on this Hype Cycle are still in their infancy, there is considerable uncertainty regarding their evolution. Such fledgeling technologies pose greater risks for deployment, but the potential benefits for early adopters could be substantial."

The four themes of emerging technology trends identified are Emergent AI, developer experience (DevX), pervasive cloud, and human-centric security and privacy.

Emergent AI: Besides GenAI, several other burgeoning AI techniques have tremendous potential to enhance digital customer experiences, make superior business decisions, and build sustainable competitive differentiation. These include AI simulation, causal AI, federated machine learning, graph data science, neuro-symbolic AI, and reinforcement learning.

Developer Experience (DevX): DevX encompasses all facets of interactions between developers and their tools, platforms, processes, and colleagues, which they utilise to create and provide software products and services. Elevating DevX is crucial for the success of most enterprises' digital initiatives. It also plays a vital role in attracting and retaining elite engineering talent, maintaining high team morale, and ensuring that work is stimulating and gratifying.

Pervasive Cloud: In the coming decade, cloud computing will shift from being a platform for technological innovation to becoming ubiquitous and a central driver of business innovation. To facilitate this widespread adoption, cloud computing is growing more distributed and focusing on specific industries. Extracting maximum value from cloud investments will necessitate automated operational scaling, availability of cloud-native platform tools, and proper governance.

Human-centric Security and Privacy: Humans continue to be the primary source of security incidents and data breaches. Organisations can foster resilience by executing a human-centric security and privacy programme, intertwining a fabric of security and privacy into the organisation's digital architecture. Various emerging technologies are empowering enterprises to cultivate a culture of mutual trust and a consciousness of shared risks in decision-making across multiple teams.