Priest recently spoke with The Associated Press about his new role and other AI business predictions his team has for the year ahead. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: When did PwC decide it wanted a chief AI officer?
A: We launched the role in early July, on the heels of us doing an AI impact analysis and strategy for the firm. The motivation was simply to make sure we were tapping into AI’s full potential, responsibly, to best serve our clients. We work with companies across a range of sectors – including tech, health care and hospitality. Q: What have the companies you work with told you about how they’re adopting AI?
A: AI is showing up in some form or fashion for the majority of our clients these days. In a recent survey that we did of Fortune 1000 companies, nearly half of respondents said AI is fully embedded in their workflows – and then about a third had even embedded it in their products and services.
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And AI is more than just a tech initiative, it’s also adjusting business strategies. CEOs overwhelmingly recognize that AI will impact their business model in some way – with about 73% of those we spoke to in a predictions report saying that they believe AI would cause a shift in their business model. In particular, we’re increasingly seeing generative AI both in the presence of the consumer and throughout product development. Q: Can you give me examples of what that looks like?
A: To be competitive, companies can’t just predict what consumers want anymore. You have to give them a way to personalise the specific products and services they want – and gen AI has a means of doing that.
Take a business in the cruising sector, for example. In the past, cruise lines would have to predict what each type of foods, products and excursions people wanted. Now, with gen AI, they can have a personalization engine that says, “I’m a fan of these luxury products,” and then make sure those types of luxury products are on board. Or, “I’m a fan of this type of food,” and they can make sure that food is on the menu. It gives companies a way to personalize the experience that wasn’t possible before.
Q: What risks should companies keep in mind when approaching AI?
A: AI is not monolithic, and there are different maturity levels for different uses. You’ve seen issues in contact centers, for example, where AI agents were introduced and in some cases gave customers hallucinations with wrong information. And so having a “maturity test” to make sure they tech you’re using is ready for prime time, particularly when it’s customer-facing, is important. Those same disciplines are critical for protecting internal data, which you don’t want inadvertently training a large language model.
That’s one category of risk. On the other side of all of this, another risk is not moving quickly enough and falling behind. Your AI strategy will either put you ahead or make it hard to ever catch up. If we take a lesson from the Internet era, a lot of those early movers ended up being winners for the next ten, 20 years. We expect to see something very similar for companies that embrace AI today, both early on and in a trustworthy way.
