Manufacturing companies are scaling back their plans to deploy to Generative AI initiatives amid increasing worry about the models sharing inaccurate information, a new study has found.

In a survey of 2,500 global business leaders, tech firm Lucidworks found that 58% respondents from the manufacturing industry planned to increase their AI spending this year.

That was far lower than 2023, when 93% of manufacturing leaders said they planned to increase spending on AI.

Across the board, concerns around security, response accuracy, and costs have forced most businesses to slow down their planned initiatives and be more strategic about the balance between cost and benefit.

Security worries have tripled, accuracy concerns have grown fivefold, and transparency issues have quadrupled since 2023. Manufacturers have some of the most concerns around response accuracy (44%) and some of the least concerns around job displacement (3%) compared to other industries.

The 2024 Generative AI Global Benchmark Study also includes the following findings:

Investment Slowdown: Global AI spending plans are down sharply, with only 63% planning increases (vs. 93% last year). USA-based organizations remain above average with 69% planning to increase AI spend.

Slow Progress: Delayed deployment and low success rates are commonplace with only 25% of planned projects fully implemented. This lag is stalling anticipated ROI, with 42% of companies yet to see significant benefits from generative AI initiatives.

Spending Flattens: Across all organizations, 36% of leaders plan to keep spending flat, compared to only 6% in last year’s survey.

Commercial LLMs Dominate: Nearly eight in 10 companies use commercial LLMs and 21% have opted for open source only.

Competitive Concerns: A third of business leaders feel like they’re falling behind competitors despite almost everyone struggling to implement this new technology.

“While many manufacturers see the potential benefits of generative AI, challenges such as response accuracy and cost are causing them to take a more cautious approach. This is reflected in spending plans, with significantly fewer planning to increase AI investments compared to last year,” said Mike Sinoway, CEO, Lucidworks.

“However, above-average reported cost benefits in 2024 could make them more bullish in the coming year. B2B companies and manufacturers have much to gain if they can balance cost and risk to improve efficiency, enhance the buyer experience, and reduce operational costs using generative AI.”

https://lucidworks.com/ebooks/2024-ai-benchmark-survey/