Executive Leadership: Artificial Intelligence Primer

for 2021
Published 4 February 2021 - ID G00738551 - 7 min read
By Analyst(s): Whit Andrews
Initiatives: Executive Leadership: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a key means to optimize, automate and

transform business processes to improve and accelerate business
outcomes. Executive leaders can guide investments through a
strategy that backs a portfolio of strong use-case-driven projects
and products that deliver value.

More on This Topic

This is part of 2 in-depth collections of research. See the collections:

■ Applying AI — A Framework for the Enterprise

■ Applying AI — Key Trends and Futures

Scope
Gartner’s executive leadership research for artificial intelligence (AI) will help organizations
to match the value and potential of AI with their strategic business priorities.

The topics we cover include:

■ Use AI in Your Digital Strategy — Automating business processes at the “low” end
and driving AI-driven decision making/business models at the “high” end, which
previously typically needed more human intercession, creates potential for new
products and business models.

■ Make AI Productive Now — Executives must use AI to help their organizations

identify business use cases, set priorities and create a fertile ecosystem for what
they can achieve today and in the future.

■ Employ AI Safely — Executive leaders should connect what AI does well to what
people want from their organizations, but also maintain a link to ethical, compliant,
risk-aware, privacy-observing and bias-reducing practices.

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■ Develop Futuristic Perspectives on AI — AI is continually advancing, and executives
should have a sense of future business opportunities as algorithms become more
sophisticated and compute resources and available data grow in scale.

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an account executive if you wish to discuss expanding your access to Gartner content.

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Analysis
Executive Leadership: Artificial Intelligence Overview

Executive leaders rightly look at AI as a technology they must master. Combined with
skills, product selection and commitment to change, AI will allow executive leaders to
remain competitive and relevant, and to pursue new directions with the products and
services their customers rely on.

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Using AI effectively enables the insights that come from data science to automate
business processes and innovate with new ones, and with technological functions, in
ways that make digital activities possible at a scale that humans previously could not
match. Already, basic tasks like language translation, basic customer service, narrative
analytical report generation and conversational applications are more accessible than
used to be possible. As AI features become common and the amount of data on which AI
functions can be trained multiplies, AI will deliver even greater value through innovation
and automation.

However, executive leaders must be part of the AI journey to ensure organizations set the
best priorities and behave in the most productive ways, and to help build the surrounding
infrastructure to get the most out of such investments. Executives must also lead the
charge in their organizations to manage inherent AI risks. AI risk management is a team
effort, involving legal, compliance, security, privacy, business functions and more.
Different competencies need to come together to ensure AI models are fair, accurate,
reliable, secure and trustworthy. AI strategies benefit from senior leadership serving as
sponsors, leaders and guarantors.

Indeed, AI is such a powerful factor in organizations’ digital ambitions that 25% of CIOs
tell us they are employing it now. A further 23% of CIOs said they would have it before the
end of 2021.

However, in each of the previous two years, more than 20% of CIOs said they would
employ AI within the next 12 months. In each of those years, just 5% of CIOs made the
leap they intended.

AI ambition is harder to fulfill than it seems. The solution is for executives to give AI their
attention. C-level leaders can deliver unique value to their AI centers of excellence (or fund,
organize and empower them if they don’t exist yet) by committing resources and focus.

Topics
Executive leaders find that AI is one of the most broadly anticipated but least understood
technologies in a generation. They must apply their insights in business practices in
conjunction with their comprehension of the value of AI. AI can be used effectively, but too
often its future remains more speculative than imaginable. Investments in an
organization’s mastery of AI must begin with using it effectively now, as well as planning
for its future directions.

Our research in this area addresses the following topics:

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Use AI in Your Digital Strategy
AI offers a worthy means to improve business outcomes. It sparks better and scalable
automation balanced with personalization, and can deliver new, innovative insight to
guide new practices. Turning to AI to scale activities also offers transformational
opportunities. Executive leaders must choose where AI should be used in business
activities and where it should be tested, or delay its consideration altogether.

Questions Your Peers Are Asking

■ What business outcomes can executive leaders improve with AI, and where do they
start?

■ How do executive leaders prioritize investments in AI with the most promise?

■ What are the essentials for success with AI now and in the future?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ Craft a Chatbot Initiative Based on Your Business Requirements and Solution

Complexity

Planned Research
■ Strategy guide for artificial intelligence

■ Quick answer on how to choose AI use cases

■ Quick answer on what organizations should use chatbots for

Make AI Productive Now

AI is no longer at the pilot phase. AI products and product development should be focused
and subjected to thoughtful measurement of business impacts. Organizations need
executive leaders to evaluate projects for their suitability, invest in strategic paths for AI
maturity and participate in dialogues that evaluate their effect. These efforts demand
funding for more than technology, with staff skills and the culture and capacity for
redesigning business processes to maximize impact.

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Questions Your Peers Are Asking
■ How do executive leaders operationalize AI?

■ How do executive leaders secure the necessary skills to develop the best
collaborations for AI in the digital business?

■ How do executive leaders deliver concrete business benefits with AI?

■ How do executive leaders prioritize and select potential AI projects?

■ How does my talent strategy and processes need to change given AI?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ AI-Successful Organizations Have These 4 Habits in Common

■ What is the True Return on AI Investment?

■ Formulate a Strategy for AI Skills Acquisition and Upskilling

■ AI ELKI: Executive Checklist To Permanently Fix Your AI Talent Shortfall

■ Quick Answer: How Should Executives Navigate Build-Versus-Buy Decisions in the AI

Vendor Landscape?

Planned Research
■ Quick answer on how to get started in AI

Employ AI Responsibly
AI offers real risks in how it “feels” to the people who encounter applications it underpins.
People who develop or encounter it wonder if it is fair. Gathering and employing the data
that AI relies on also presents risks to privacy. Executive leaders must be part of the
philosophy and practicality of AI use. Together with citizens and their governments,
leading organizations will set the direction of AI throughout digital societies.

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Questions Your Peers Are Asking

■ How should executive leaders respond to the evolving purpose and importance of AI
to the digital enterprise and society?

■ What do executive leaders need to understand and apply AI?

■ How can executive accountability be aligned and organized for AI?

■ How are other organizations thinking about AI risks?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ 3 Critical Workforce Conversations Executive Leaders Must Have to Ensure AI

Success

■ Dispelling AI Myths and Describing the Realities for Executive Leaders

■ What Non-Technology Executives Should Do in Support of Responsible AI Initiatives

■ AI for the Board

Planned Research
■ Best practices for how executives can reduce bias in AI projects

Develop Futuristic Perspectives on AI

The definition we use for AI is different today from 20 years ago; in another 10 years, it
will change again. Executive leaders want to understand the direction that AI will take as it
forces other aspects of computing to adapt. While the narrowest aspects of AI’s advance
will stay within the domain of analytics experts, executive leaders must prepare to
leverage the most significant parts of the evolution of AI.

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Questions Your Peers Are Asking

■ How can AI strategy prepare organizations for its most beneficial future
applications?

■ How will AI mature as it enters the realm of business application?

■ What will define vision in organizations employing AI?

■ How to identify future business models that AI will enable?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ Dispelling AI Myths and Describing the Realities for Executive Leaders

■ Quick Answer: How Should CXOs Structure Operating Models to Capitalize on AI

Opportunities?

Planned Research
■ Gartner predictions for AI in 2022

■ The Future of AI

Suggested First Steps

■ Quick Answer: How to Define Artificial Intelligence

■ Quick Answer: What to Measure in an Artificial Intelligence Project

Essential Reading
■ Dispelling AI Myths and Describing the Realities for Executive Leaders

■ Draft Business Cases for AI Using These 6 Factors

■ 3 Key Practices to Boost AI Maturity in Your Organization

Tools and Toolkits

■ Toolkit: Workshop to Identify the Right AI Use Cases for Your Organization

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Related Priorities

Initiative Name Description

Artificial Intelligence Our research in 2021 will help organizations

harness the power of artificial intelligence
(AI) techniques, whether they are just
starting out with AI or implementing
enterprisewide AI-enabled systems.

Executive Leadership: Data and Analytics
Gartner’s executive leadership research for
data and analytics helps leaders
collaboratively define and deliver on their
mission-critical priorities, fueled by data and
insights.

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Related Priorities
Initiative Name Description

Artificial Intelligence Our research in 2021 will help organizations harness the power of
artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, whether they are just
starting out with AI or implementing enterprisewide AI-enabled
systems.

Executive Leadership: Data and Analytics Gartner’s executive leadership research for data and analytics
helps leaders collaboratively define and deliver on their mission-
critical priorities, fueled by data and insights.

Initiative Name Description

Artificial Intelligence Our research in 2021 will help organizations harness the power of
artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, whether they are just starting out
with AI or implementing enterprisewide AI-enabled systems.

Executive Leadership: Data and Analytics Gartner’s executive leadership research for data and analytics helps
leaders collaboratively define and deliver on their mission-critical priorities,
fueled by data and insights.

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