According to a study, 82 percent of CTOs and CIOs of large companies worldwide consider AI to be crucial for defending against cyber threats. Only 38 percent of teams already use AI in all areas. Many fear that AI could write the code for vulnerabilities.
Companies are increasing their investments in AI across all business areas to increase productivity, automate tasks, reduce costs and remain competitive, according to the latest study “The state of AI 2024: Challenges to adoption and key strategies for organizational success” by Dynatrace.
Companies must ensure trustworthiness
The survey of 1.300 CTOs, CIOs and technology decision-makers from large companies also shows that, in addition to all the valid advantages, there are also challenges and risks: Companies must ensure that the results of generative AI are trustworthy in order to support business-critical use cases. In addition, both internal and global guidelines regarding data security and data protection must be adhered to.
The results of the study commissioned by Dynatrace, a leader in unified observability and security, also show the need for a combined approach to AI that allows companies to use multiple types of artificial intelligence (generative, predictive, causal AI) as well as different data sources (observability, security and business events). 95 percent of respondents believe that generative AI would be more beneficial if enriched by other types of AI that can provide precise facts about current conditions and accurate predictions about the future. Only a comprehensive approach enables profound conclusions and gives AI results precision, context and meaning.
The study's findings include:
- 38 percent of global teams in all departments are currently using AI-based tools or services across all areas (Germany: 39 percent).
- 83 percent of those surveyed say that AI has become indispensable in order to keep up with the dynamics of cloud environments (Germany: 91 percent).
- 82 percent believe that AI will be crucial for detecting, investigating and responding to security threats (Germany: 81 percent).
- 88 percent expect that AI will expand access to data analysis through natural language queries to non-technical employees (Germany: 93 percent).
- 88 percent say that AI will increase cost efficiency in the cloud by supporting FinOps practices (Germany: 96 percent).
- 93 percent of managers surveyed fear that AI could be used for unauthorized purposes as employees become increasingly accustomed to using tools such as ChatGPT (Germany: 100 percent).
Companies need to monitor AI
“AI has become a key factor in increasing business efficiency, improving productivity and accelerating innovation,” says Bernd Greifeneder, Chief Technology Officer and founder of Dynatrace. “However, as companies strive to understand the value to be gained from this, it is becoming clear that generative AI requires domain-specific alignment and integration with other technologies, including other types of AI. Companies must also use AI safely and responsibly and monitor it closely to manage costs and user experience.”
Other important results of the study:
- 95 percent believe that generative AI would be more beneficial if it were enriched by other types of AI that can provide precise facts about current conditions and accurate predictions about the future (Germany: 98 percent).
- 61 percent of those surveyed want to invest more in AI in the next 12 months in order to accelerate development through automatic code generation (Germany: 54 percent).
- 95 percent are concerned that the use of generative AI to create code could lead to vulnerabilities and improper or illegal use of intellectual property (Germany: 94 percent).
- 62 percent of companies have already changed the tasks and skills for which they are looking for personnel due to AI (Germany: 74 percent).
- 98 percent fear that generative AI could be susceptible to unintentional biases, errors and misinformation (Germany: 99 percent).
“One of the biggest challenges for companies when it comes to generative AI is getting meaningful answers that users can rely on to solve specific use cases and problems,” explains Greifeneder.
Combined approach important for companies
And further: “A combined approach to AI is crucial, especially for use cases that involve automation and depend on data context. For example, automating software services, remediating security vulnerabilities, predicting maintenance needs, and analyzing business data all require a combined AI approach. This should provide the precision of causal AI, which determines the underlying causes and effects of system behavior, and the power of predictive AI, which predicts future events based on historical data.
Predictive AI and causal AI not only provide the necessary context for the answers generated by generative AI, but can also lead generative AI to incorporate precise, non-probabilistic answers into its responses. If companies align their strategy correctly, combining these different types of AI with high-quality observability, security and business data can significantly increase the productivity of their development, operations and security teams and create lasting business value.”
Methodology
On behalf of Dynatrace, Coleman Parkes surveyed 1.300 CTOs, CIOs and other IT infrastructure and DevOps technology executives from companies with more than 1.000 employees worldwide. The survey included 200 respondents in the United States, 100 in Latin America, 600 in Europe, 150 in the Middle East and 250 in Asia Pacific.
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