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Has regulation impeded progress?

Has regulation impeded progress?

Plus, AI agent security, industry transformation papers, and more.

Lewis Walker
January 22, 2025

WELCOME, EXECUTIVES AND PROFESSIONALS.

Regulation has held back gen AI deployment, according to Deloitte survey. But with the U.S. loosening constraints and ramping up infrastructure spending, are we entering a new phase of AI acceleration?

Since the previous edition, we've reviewed hundreds of the latest insights on best practices, case studies, and innovation. Here’s the top 1%...

In today’s edition:

Deloitte’s State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Q4 report.
Accenture shares AI agent security best practices.
OpenAI unveils $500B U.S. AI infrastructure initiative.
World Economic Forum publishes nine AI transformation papers.
Transformation and technology in the news.
Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

MARKET INSIGHT

Deloitte’s State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Q4 report

Image source: Deloitte

Brief: Deloitte's latest quarterly survey, drawing insights from 2,773 director- to C-suite-level leaders across 14 countries, explores trends, barriers, and opportunities in gen AI adoption, offering insights on organizational adaptability, regulation, and agentic AI.

Breakdown:

Most organizations aren’t moving as fast as technological innovation. 78% of respondents plan to increase AI spending in the next fiscal year.
Regulatory compliance is now the top concern hindering gen AI deployment, rising from 28% in Q1 to 38% in Q4.
IT is the most mature gen AI function, with cybersecurity, operations, marketing, and customer service also seeing strong results.
Gen AI deployments are increasingly aimed at areas critical for industry-specific competitive differentiation.
C-suite leaders are more optimistic about gen AI, expecting barriers to be overcome and value delivered faster than other leaders anticipate.
Agentic AI is gaining traction for its potential to handle increasingly complex tasks and unlock gen AI’s full potential, but the broad challenges facing enterprises still apply.

Why it’s important: The report conveys pragmatic optimism. Seventy-four percent of respondents say their most advanced gen AI initiative meets or exceeds ROI expectations. Six real-world case studies are highlighted, showcasing enterprise results. However, achieving widespread success requires patience and hard work.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Accenture shares AI agent security best practices

Image source: Accenture

Brief: Accenture's blog explores how organizations can manage AI agent identities effectively. As AI agents are onboarded into workforces and marketplaces, they need to be treated with the same level of security consideration as human employees.

Breakdown:

78% of executives in Accenture's Tech Vision 2025 survey believe AI agents will need digital ecosystems as robust as those for humans within 3-5 years.
Deploying AI agents at scale requires a Zero Trust model: "Trust Nothing, Verify Everything," ensuring network requests are continuously validated.
The model incorporates four key areas: Identity & Access Management, Secured Workflow, AI Runtime Security, and Human Oversight.
Identity & Access Management will play an important role in governing access and permitted actions for AI agents within an organization.
The blog explores five best practices: zero trust, context-aware access, ephemeral access, lifecycle management, and credential management.

Why it’s important: By implementing these best practices, enterprises can strengthen defenses against cyber threats, ensuring robust security and resilience across digital operations. This proactive strategy is key in today’s digital age, where cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated and pervasive.

INNOVATION INSIGHT

OpenAI unveils $500B U.S. AI infrastructure initiative

Image source: OpenAI

Brief: OpenAI launched "The Stargate Project," a new initiative set to invest $500B in U.S. AI infrastructure. In partnership with SoftBank, Oracle, and other tech giants, the venture comes as President Trump repeals the Biden-era AI safety order.

Breakdown:

The venture will deploy an initial $100B, starting with large-scale data centers in Texas, and plans to expand nationwide.
The project aims to create "hundreds of thousands" of American jobs while further strengthening the U.S. position in advanced AI development.
Key technology partners include Nvidia, Microsoft, and Arm, leveraging existing collaborations in AI chip development and cloud infrastructure.
The initiative follows the repeal of Biden’s AI executive order, which created the AI Safety Institute and required labs to share safety testing results.

Why it’s important: Stargate's $500B scale and unprecedented collaboration among tech players could reshape the AI race, marking a defining moment for the U.S. It signals a clear prioritization of speed and could reverberate globally as other nations evaluate their competitiveness in the AI race.

INDUSTRY INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

WEF publishes nine AI transformation papers

Image source: World Economic Forum

Brief: The World Economic Forum (WEF) published nine white papers on AI transformation across industries and regions, written in collaboration with Accenture, BCG, McKinsey, and the University of Oxford.

Breakdown:

The 30-page Cross-Industry AI in Action paper explores AI opportunities, adoption trends, its future potential, and features 19 case studies.
The 26-page Rise of AI Agents paper examines virtual and embodied AI, The 28-page Cybersecurity paper covers AI risks and mitigation strategies.
The 29-page Energy paper details scaling sustainable AI across nine industries. The 27-page Financial Services paper highlights AI value creation and risks.
The 30-page Healthcare paper explores AI visions and scaling challenges. The 33-page Transport paper analyzes AI's role in cutting emissions by 15%.
The 28-page Media paper covers trends and adoption. The 32-page China paper highlights AI-led industrial growth and policy collaboration.

Why it’s important: This series offers a comprehensive mix of analysis into specific industries and regions. It provides actionable guidance for organizations navigating AI transformation, emphasizing responsible practices to unlock AI’s full potential while ensuring sustainable innovation.

Goldman Sachs introduced GS AI Assistant, an in-house tool supporting over 10,000 employees with tasks like email drafting and code translation.

SAP Chief Marketing Officer Eric van Rossum shared three guiding principles to help enterprises get greater value from their gen AI implementations, emphasizing AI relevance, reliability, and responsibility.

World Economic Forum, in collaboration with KPMG, released a 21-page blueprint for AI competitiveness through regional collaboration, addressing infrastructure, data, guardrails, and more.

PWC released a 28-page CEO survey, based on 4,701 responses globally. CEOs report early productivity gains from gen AI and rising payoffs from sustainability investments, but the challenge is expanding scope and speed.

McKinsey published an article on unlocking value from technology and AI for institutional investors, highlighting strategy, tools, and talent as key factors for scaling technology and generating alpha.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated in a Davos interview that the company is developing a two-way voice mode for Claude and smarter models for release in the coming months.

Sam Altman will brief U.S. government officials on a major AI advancement at the end of January, with reports suggesting OpenAI has developed AI agents capable of tackling Ph.D.-level tasks.

Perplexity launched Sonar and Sonar Pro, two API options that give developers access to the company's powerful search tech, enabling real-time, citation-backed search in third-party applications.

DeepSeek unveiled DeepSeek-R1, an open-source reasoning model that reportedly rivals or outperforms OpenAI's o1 on select benchmarks, while costing developers just 5-10% of o1's API price.

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch announced that the startup is exploring an IPO, dismissing acquisition rumors for the French AI leader, now valued at nearly $6B.