This may not come as a surprise, but CEOs have artificial intelligence (AI) and ChatGPT on their minds.

In a response to an open-ended question, a recent Gartner survey of 400 CEOs and senior executives revealed that AI is the technology that business leaders believe will most significantly impact their industry over the next three years, cited by 21% of survey respondents.

What is surprising, according to Mark Raskino, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, is that the survey was fielded between July and December 2022, so it predates the rapid and recent mainstream chatter around ChatGPT. "There [are] a lot of factors in business, and most CEOs aren't obsessed with technology," Raskino said. But they "mentioned it of their own volition" in response to the open question.

It's less clear how those 400 CEOs and other senior business executives across different geographies, industries, revenue and company sizes will deploy AI to ensure a positive impact for their companies. Given the disruptive force of AI, the technology transcends IT teams and is becoming part of business processes with a goal of improving efficiency and productivity.

CEOs can't afford to ignore AI. Raskino compares generative AI and ChatGPT to the disruption caused by Uber and AirBnB about 10 years ago. "In 2014, if you remember, people were concerned about being disrupted by the likes of Uber and AirBnB." It became a topic in boardrooms all over the world, he said. CEOs were saying, "Look at what AirBnB is doing to the hotel industry. And look at what Uber is doing to the transportation industry. And could that happen to us?"

Raskino said that chief executives this year, and for the previous dozen years of doing these surveys, haven’t been particularly focused on managing efficiency and productivity. Yet those are the areas AI promises to address.

[caption id="attachment_130143" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Artificial intelligence (AI) tops the list of technologies that CEOs say have the biggest impact on business in the next three years. (Source: Gartner).[/caption]

“They talk about cost management, to some extent, but they usually focus elsewhere,” Raskino explained. “The proposition that the world seems to be putting behind AI is substantial augmentation of professionals and potentially replacing certain tasks. But CEOs have not been  driving productivity in terms of output per worker. So we've got a powerful tool meeting a relatively unpracticed set of solutions.”

Raskino said CEOs spent the first decade of the century doing labor arbitrage, and the second decade century doing financial planning. “They are now hit with this tool that is an amazing thing.” But, he added, most CEOs have very little practice reengineering products into their own operating models. “It will be easy for people to make mistakes.”

The best use cases, Raskino said, may be for people doing more mundane legal or procurement tasks that require generating text – something not prone to mistakes.

Mistakes or not, ready or not, CEOs have no choice, Raskino said. "I think the difficulty with this technology is the extent to which they can actually control it." He compared ChatGPT to the emergence of Google search. “It was one of the first times when there was nobody in charge. When search came along, no corporation decided we're going to go with Google search. It just kind of came through the window.”

“That’s the thing about ChatGPT. It’s already inside the company.”

While AI grabs the mainstream headlines these days, sustainability has a buzz as well, especially within the tech sector.  Every vendor, every customer, every executive knows they must acknowledge the importance of sustainability, but movement has been slow or for show.  But things are changing, Raskino said.

"It’s real. It's beyond just greenwashing and beyond pretense." That’s something Raskino wouldn’t have said a year ago. "I'm constantly surprised, because we've been asking that same question, "What are your top five strategic business priorities in your own words? We started doing it a dozen years ago."

Raskino said the open-ended question isn’t an efficient way to run a survey because you have to categorize all the responses. But Gartner does it that way because picking topics from a list wasn’t yielding the best results.

“With sustainability, in particular, when it was in a list, CEOs would always pick it. Then we switched to an open question … crickets.”  Until this year. While it had never cracked the Top 10, this year it’s No. 8.

Raskino said CEO mindsets are changing, and they are seeing sustainability not "as a problem and a compliance cost, but as a business opportunity."

CEO are thinking, "My business customers want greener. My consumers want a greener product or service. They need traceability, proof that what was manufactured was made with green electricity. If I have a greener product, I stand to make more money," Raskino said. "I think we've reached that tipping point where they're being driven as much by opportunity as by CSR [corporate social responsibility] considerations or requirements." They are realizing that “this is what everyone's going to want, and that's how I'm going to make money or lose money."

While business goals may be what drives sustainability to top of mind for CEOs, there are still other reasons why executive leaders see sustainability as a priority, Raskino said.

"People think that all business leaders are cynical, and they'll just do anything," Raskino said. "But a lot of them do actually realize [sustainability] is for the future of the planet."