Adam Lawrence, general manager of IBM Americas, tracked the rapid acceleration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology deployment over the past few years, and predicted “tremendous” gains in innovation and business productivity that will result from that trend.
Speaking at the IBM Think Leadership Exchange on Nov. 20 in Washington, D.C., Lawrence noted the development cycles of other big technology breakthroughs over the last few decades – including internet service proliferation and usage – and how “each successive technology has been able to deliver value faster.”
“I think now with generative AI and hybrid cloud, we’re going to see a much more rapid pace of deployment, of value, of people using it, and I think at the end of the day we’re going to see tremendous productivity and innovation that’s being delivered from the technology,” he said.
On the government technology front, Lawrence cited research from tech consulting firm ICF this year that found 99 percent of Federal agency leaders “think that they need safe and effective AI”
to improve their mission performance and said, “we believe in that fully.”
“It’s hard to think it was only really two years ago the world began to experiment with generative AI, and we went two years ago from being able to write poems and emails and do fun things that were kind of a novelty to now having an essential technology that’s needed across industry and across government,” he said.
“And we see the values – being able to create insights and data, automate tasks, automate full business processes,” Lawrence said. “And really it’s enabling organizations and industry to reinvent customer service, application modernization, and drive great productivity.”
“With all the benefit also comes some risks,” he continued. “So, we need to be thinking about how do we really pick the right use cases … and identify those use cases where you can use it safely.”
But it’s not just use cases, Lawrence said, it’s “getting down to make sure it’s an open and trusted technology architecture to enable you to safely and securely scale AI models.”
“There is a balance between innovation, trust, [and] security that we all have to kind of manage and think through,” the IBM official said.
