MOST Gen AI POCs will fail to make it to production. Why? 1. We have had some potential clients expecting us to build POCs for free ("You can put our logo on your slides, but we won't pay") - frankly if you're not willing to pay for a product, you haven't even given it enough thought or consideration. It's just wasting everyone's time. And Gen AI is not a cheap solution, especially when it's custom build. 2. There is no clear understanding of 'cost of compute'. "Let's just do a POC now, and we will figure deployment later". There's a reason why NVIDIA is a 3 Trillion $ co - there's a chip demand-supply mismatch and cost of a product (compute) in a a supply restricted market is going to stay elevated in short run. No clear deployment plan post POC is an another brilliant dead end. 3. No Data strategy - you just can't use ALL of your data on one single LLM. One of the biggest problems we have seen (and are addressing for our clients) is using PII data in Gen AI workflows. People we meet in Insurance, Banking, family office etc tell us there is more data they can't put onto Gen AI workflows, than the one they use. Perfunctory data strategy, or using simulated data to push through a POC won't get you anywhere meaningful. 4. One LLM to rule over all mistake - Way too often we come across "Lets just use the most powerful LLM and do all of this". When the fact is, some LLMs are better for some use cases you are trying to solve. Keep aside the compute cost, deployment flexibility, ownership of data etc. LLMs are tools - just like hammers and screw drivers. You can, if you wish to, hammer a nail with a screw driver, but… 5. Too many POCs - how many POCs are too many? We met someone who showed us a deck of 58 POC ideas that their company is working through (I am understating that number). I was left wondering, isn't it better to just get team leaders from different functions into a room, have a simple discussion with a whiteboard and list what problems would they like to eliminate? 58+ POCs is just lazy - the list was built by prompting chatgpt - "give me 5 dozen Gen AI POC ideas for an Bank" Gen AI is not magic. It won't make all your problems disappear over a weekend, it won't suddenly make your sales guys super heroes, or get your costs down by 50% by the time you go on your Christmas holidays. It is a super powerful tool for sure, and instead of wasting time and money on 5 dozen POCs, it might just be better to 3-5 solid ones with a clarity of how to execute till the end.
Sonal Shah
7mo
Very insightful and sadly true. Seen this for any new tech on the block. And once been a part of the problem too. Vendors need to educate clients on this and actually say No when necessary
Leading Banking as a Service solutions for Banks and FinTechs to enable Financial Inclusion, Digital Banking & Automation
7moWell said Partha, not just for GenAI though- this trend prevails across any innovation being introduced in the industry :)