3 misconceptions hindering the adoption of generative AI in business

Generative AI has tremendous potential to drive business growth. It provides ease of integration and scalability for analytics and AI workloads using your company’s data, and provides guardrails to ensure governance, security, and compliance. So why do millions of small and medium-sized businesses believe that influential AI is only accessible to big, deep-pocketed corporations?

Business leaders overestimate the resources needed to pursue AI and are often unaware of the skills and training available. Let’s get straight to the point. Your company cannot afford to wait any longer. If you are a business leader who is not pursuing AI, be assured that the competition is fierce and you risk being left behind. Now is the time to clear up the three misunderstandings that are holding small businesses back.

Myth 1: Our company lacks the right tools and platforms to develop trustworthy AI.

AI can be a game-changer for businesses looking to improve operations in areas such as IT, HR, marketing, and customer service. I’m not talking about conversational AI chatbots that generate answers to common questions with little transparency about their training or data. Now you can scale and accelerate business impact by integrating enterprise-grade AI that provides access to hundreds of pre-trained models and an array of AI assistants.

It’s not just industry giants that are driving innovation with generative AI. For example, online education startup Make Music Count used the IBM watsonx™ AI and data platform to personalize lesson plans for students on its learning platform, allowing students to ask questions and receive real-time math support through chat. Similar integrations help small businesses empower individuals across the organization to power their operations with AI without requiring technical expertise, saving resources while creating a better user experience.

Another important component of the first myth is the term “trustworthy.” This is a valid concern, which is why IBM helps small and medium-sized businesses train, scale, and manage AI with trusted data and governance capabilities. We integrate transparency into our AI models and publicly share the data sources used for training. Additionally, IBM provides the same contractual intellectual property protection for IBM-developed AI models as it does for all of its products, strengthening your enterprise’s confidence in your AI journey.

Myth 2: AI is too complex and expensive for my company to build from scratch.

Historically, AI has been perceived as a complex, expensive, and time-consuming endeavor. That is no longer the case. Take Ovum Health, a fertility care provider, as an example, which recently partnered with IBM to integrate IBM watsonx™ AI Assistant from IBM’s portfolio of embedded AI technologies into its website and mobile app within 60 days. AI helps Ovum Health expand its user base by better engaging patients and solving pregnancy challenges validated by a panel of board-certified medical experts.

Not familiar with embedded AI? IBM offers a portfolio of technologies including watsonx, AI libraries, applications and APIs that can be customized to suit a variety of needs. This means businesses of all sizes can build AI-based solutions in less time and with fewer resources.

Additionally, introducing foundational models that are trained on a wide range of unlabeled data and require minimal fine-tuning for a variety of tasks will make it easier for companies to deploy AI in a variety of mission-critical situations. This reduces the time spent labeling data and the need for trained developers to program models.

Myth 3: My company lacks the right skills and expertise for AI development.

An experienced partner is essential to unlock the full potential of generative AI for your customers. That’s why within a week of IBM announcing watsonx, it was providing partners with the same technical and sales support materials that it provides to its employees. Partners can immediately acquire watsonx technologies and provide them to their organizations and customers. Partners also have access to cloud credits, technical expertise, demand generation support, and joint marketing support to develop and sell AI solutions.

But we didn’t stop there. AI is so important, and building the right technologies to support its rapid growth is critical. That’s why any developer or IT practitioner can also access free generative AI training courses designed by experts who create training for 8 million developers through Coursera and other platforms.

Learn how IBM can help businesses overcome the myths surrounding AI adoption.

Adopting AI doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. In fact, with the technology and support available today, even an early-stage startup can access watsonx on Friday and be up and running by Tuesday. We even tested this theory by participating in a hackathon where more than 200,000 IBM employees with little or no coding experience participated in a hackathon to create a watsonx application.

The next era of business will be characterized by the ability to integrate AI. If companies aren’t actively exploring how AI can impact their operations, they risk being left behind. Now that we’ve debunked these adoption myths, we hope you can set aside any doubts small businesses had and start your company using AI for business.

Learn more about our partnership with IBM and watsonx Read: 4 ways to empower small and medium-sized businesses with generative AI