Governance is the bigger challenge

width="1024" height="576" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">Sean Kask, Chief AI Strategy Officer at SAP SAP In an interview, Sean Kask, Chief AI Strategy Officer at SAP, commented on the study’s key findings. Mr. Kask, in the study’s foreword, you write that companies are currently facing two challenges simultaneously: The risks associated with AI are evolving faster than governance, while the business benefits are often difficult to measure. Which of these poses the greater problem for companies? Sean Kask: Measuring the business value of IT investments has never been easy.

The same applies to AI. That’s why I currently consider the governance issue to be the greater challenge. While traditional governance principles and best practices for secure software development remain important even in the age of large language models and agent-based AI, entirely new risks are emerging at the same time. For example, as soon as companies roll out AI on a broad scale, they suddenly discover hundreds or even thousands of so-called shadow agents that employees are using without central oversight. Or they find that a significant portion of the workforce is copying content into private ChatGPT accounts.

Such risks often only become apparent once AI is already being used productively. According to your study, German companies invest an average of nearly $40 million in AI, more than companies in all other countries surveyed. Why is that? Kask: I was less surprised by the amount of investment than by the fact that, overall, the level of investment and the return on investment achieved have developed very similarly across the various countries. There’s no clear answer as to why Germany invests more.

In part, it’s likely simply because costs here are higher than in India, for example. However, we’re also seeing a high level of AI adoption among German companies. SAP has a dashboard that allows us to track how our customers are using AI features.