Steve Murphy’s message to the roughly 4,000 people assembled before him was crystal clear: Don’t be embarrassed one bit, said the CEO of Epicor, about being a skeptic when it comes to artificial intelligence in 2024.
The leader of the $1.3 billion enterprise software company told his audience at the Epicor Insights conference in Nashville in late May that it’ll be quite a while before we see the end of “a lot of hype and grandiose proposals” involving AI. In the meantime, he added, the best path may to combine learning how to use new AI tools — Epicor itself is just working them into its own offerings — while making sure that there’s a very tangible business case to be made for them in your organizations.
“You may be the only one in room asking, “Exactly how will this work? What process is it replacing?” Murphy said. “It’s OK to be a skeptic. It’s going to be a little awkward at times but it will pay off.”
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AI also features prominently in Dennis Scimeca’s recent analysis of IndustryWeek’s 2024 technology survey. One idea that emerges in that story is that unspecific language is making it hard to get at just what role AI is playing in manufacturing today. But it also looks like a good number of companies are taking to heart Murphy’s message about taking their time.
“When we asked specifically whether respondents used GenAI tools like ChatGPT and OpenAI, 36% said yes,” Scimeca writes. “We again asked them to elaborate. On reflection we were fishing with this one, trying to see if anyone has concocted manufacturing-specific GenAI use cases. Short answer: No.”
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Looking for more context and sentiment around AI and industrial automation more broadly? The latest Endeavor Business Intelligence topic scorecard brings together voice-of-the-customer data collected from across the web to examine conversational sentiment and perceptions around industrial automation. You can download it right here.
