Nearly 6 in 10 manufacturing CEOs are adopting AI for business tasks

Nearly six out of 10 CEOs in the manufacturing sector (59%) say their companies are either currently using or have imminent plans to use open and regenerative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, according to research from CEO coaching organization Vistage.

In a survey of the CEOs of small to midsize (SMB) manufacturing firms, San Diego-based Vistage found rising popularity of AI throughout the industry. The results echo similar findings from The Conference Board, which recently found that more than half of U.S. employees are already using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to accomplish work-related tasks.

Most researchers define generative AI as a type of artificial intelligence program that can compile information from large data sets and automatically craft natural language answers to users’ queries. And regenerative AI is a similar tool that has the potential to learn and evolve on its own without the need for human intervention.

The Vistage survey found that the most common application of AI in manufacturing is for customer engagement tasks such as sales and marketing (54%), followed by business operations (35%), talent management and hiring (20%), and financial reporting (8%).

Despite the swift rise of new uses for AI in business, 59% of CEOs in the survey said they do not anticipate an impact to personnel. In fact, 35% anticipate training existing personnel to use AI, and 13% anticipate hiring new personnel who are already skilled in AI. Smaller numbers said they anticipate reducing personnel for AI (9%) or replacing existing personnel with those with AI experience (5%).