AI in Business: Navigating Risk in Adopting a Powerful but Not Well-Understood Technology

Whether in search of reduced costs, improved service or simply a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), companies – large and small – are rapidly moving to adopt the increasingly powerful artificial intelligence business tools (“AI”) now available to them. These companies are using AI both as a standalone technology for specialized use cases and/or embedding it within common enterprise software systems that handle core business processes.

While AI can deliver impressive results, even the CEOs of some major providers of AI tools acknowledge that they do not fully understand the behavior of this powerful technology. For example, AI has a common tendency to “hallucinate”, a term used in AI-speak to mean make up facts and assert the existence of things, people or circumstances that are not real.

Although a number of countries and regions are developing AI strategies and regulatory frameworks, the technology, its benefits, risks, and ethical issues it generates are not necessarily well understood by the regulators. The use of AI by organizations – especially generative AI – is increasingly prompting questions around intellectual property, data privacy, discrimination, litigation, transparency, ethics, and regulation which largely remain unanswered.

This hybrid program held by EACC Florida in February 2024, looked at some of the key issues companies involved in transatlantic business are facing as it relates to the use of AI, how regulatory frameworks are being developed on both sides of the Atlantic, and how companies can manage risk in the still muddled AI waters.

Speakers included: Evi Fuelle, Global Policy Director – Credo AI; Laura Juanes Micas, VP, Privacy Officer – Restaurant Brands International; Oleksii Yaremenko, Director, Global Services – LeverX; David Zetoony, Co-Chair, U.S. Data Privacy and Cybersecurity Practice – Greenberg Traurig; and Alan Sutin, Chair Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice and Senior Chair Global Intellectual Property & Technology Practice – Greenberg Traurig, and President – EACC Florida.