The 2 biggest mistakes companies are making with AI, according to PwC's US CEO

Paul Griggs said that companies are mistaking AI as a technological revolution. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Semafor

PwC US CEO Paul Griggs says that companies are getting two things wrong about AI.

Griggs said AI is not a tech transformation, it's a business transformation.

He also said that AI won't alone fix inefficient processes.

There are two major misconceptions about AI, according to PwC's senior partner and US CEO Paul Griggs .

The first: AI isn't fundamentally a technology transformation. Griggs told Business Insider that companies that think about AI adoption this way will continue to "stub their toe" with that mindset.

He said these companies tend to confine this work within the CIO or CTO role and that these organizations and are "simply missing the opportunity," he said.

Instead, firms should think of AI as a "large-scale business transformation," Griggs said. "It is a change-management exercise with all of your people and all of your processes."

Griggs, who started at the Big Four consulting giant as an intern roughly 30 years ago, said that he sees AI as the "greatest opportunity" of his career, and there's no question about it enhancing productivity. The real question is what companies should do with it.

"The lazy answer is you just take it to the bottom line," Griggs said, adding that, "the harder question that we have to ask ourselves is: Where is the growth opportunity and potential in my business, and am I willing to deploy that AI dividend into those growth opportunities?"

The second misconception is believing AI alone can fix a broken business. If companies layer AI on top of inefficient processes, Griggs said, they'll simply end up with a more complicated process powered by AI.

"If you're layering it on top of messy processes, all AI is going to do for you is tell you how bad your messy process really is," Griggs said.

Instead, companies need to rebuild their processes and should view AI as an "end-to-end" transformation. He added that firms need to engage with customers, build relationships, and create new opportunities.

That includes looking at a given workflow to determine where it makes sense to deploy technology within it, Griggs said.

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