Welcome to the Deloitte UK AI Institute’s generative AI blog series

Generative AI: the words on everyone’s lips right now.

Scarcely a day goes by without the release of another generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) model or product, be it text generation, image generation, video generation, sound generation, AI agents...and perhaps one day, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)?

With all the buzz around generative AI, it can be difficult to separate hype from reality and to understand the multitude of different ways in which generative AI will create value for companies and for society.

Although AI has been used within industry for many years, generative AI is a tipping point into a new era. Generative AI models can not only improve the quality and efficiency of backend business processes, but also augment a huge variety of day-to-day tasks. Generative AI is already fundamentally transforming the nature of work, and it is only – can you believe – around 6 months since the initial release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

But as with all new technologies, it can be complex and difficult to build real, long term and sustained value. Whilst it is relatively simple to use tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard to draft emails and debug code, it is different story when it comes to integrating these tools into existing, complex commercial environments in way that truly augments and transforms existing organisations.

At the same time, generative AI will disrupt entire industries, and fundamentally change interactions between businesses and consumers.

Collectively, this poses significant opportunities and risks for organisations across our economy: opportunities to transform and exploit rapid changes in markets, and risks in managing complex organisational change, in navigating significant uncertainty, and in avoiding being left behind as markets and society evolve.

Here at Deloitte, we’ve been market leaders at the intersection between technology, innovation and industry since our inception. Through successive waves of technology-led disruption, we’ve enabled organisations both big and small to successfully manage and exploit new technologies as they progress from science fiction to business-as-usual.

This has enabled Deloitte to build tremendous knowledge and expertise, both at the cutting-edge of AI, and at the forefront of technology-driven change.

We’re delighted to present our forthcoming blog series on generative AI. The series will provide a platform to some of our leading thinkers and doers who are currently deep in the midst of the generative AI revolution, working tirelessly with our clients to help them understand and navigate the on-going and rapid changes to our economy and society.

We plan on publishing new blog posts regularly for the next four months that explore a huge range of topics, including hierarchical AI agents, implications of generative AI for higher education and skills in the workplace, and risks in deploying generative AI into commercial and consumer-facing applications.

Throughout this series, we are encouraging all our writers to provide bold, interesting, and challenging perspectives, in part to cut through the ever-growing noise on generative AI, and to ensure we provide insights that are genuinely thought-provoking, novel, and useful for our clients, collaborators and wider audience.

We can’t wait to read what our colleagues produce, and we’re hugely excited for you join us as we explore the inspiring – and if not sometimes unsettling – world of generative AI.