American CEOs trust AI over peers for business insight: SAP survey
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — More U.S. executives are using artificial intelligence (AI) for business advice, often trusting it more than their human counterparts.
In SAP’s study, “AI Has a Seat in the C-Suite,” 74% of top managers prefer AI’s insights to that of their friends or colleagues. Forty-four percent are willing to override their decisions based on AI insights, and 38% are willing to delegate business decisions to AI.
This trend shows that AI can gather a vast amount of data and provide more detailed advice than a human advisor might.
The role of AI in decision making
The survey was conducted via Wakefield Research from December 9 to December 20, 2024, and 300 C-Level decision makers from companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue in the U.S. were polled.
It was found that 64% of leaders are using generative AI for their decision-making processes. Furthermore, 55% of workers are in companies where AI-based recommendations are used to support or often substitute for conventional decision-making processes, particularly in larger organizations with annual revenue of $5 billion and above.
“Most executive decisions are based on a combination of the data, how they feel and discussions they’ve had with people they trust,” said Jared Coyle, chief AI officer for SAP North America.
“What this data tells us is that AI is part of that trusted inner circle.”
AI adoption: Opportunities and risks
Executives are most confident in the ability of AI to support data analysis and recommendation (52%), risk identification (48%), and development of alternative solutions (47%). Additionally, 40% of executives use AI to enhance product development, budget planning, and market research.
Outside of the office, AI offers benefits to executives by improving work-life balance (39%), mental well-being (38%), and decreasing stress (31%).
Balancing the use of AI in the workplace
However, Coyle pointed out that many organizations struggle with establishing a solid data foundation because of misalignment between IT and business functions, integration issues, and data quality issues. That is why the human touch is still necessary for important decisions.
“For key strategic decisions that have substantive business results, the rate of hallucinations has to be almost zero,” he advised.
“And so for those decisions, most leaders are going back to the trusted data set and the human is in the loop on those.”
In his post on X, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about the need to combine AI with human teamwork. He recently said, “The emerging pattern I’m seeing in my own work is thinking with AI and collaborating with other people.”
Thus, as AI impacts the C-suite, managers must understand the opportunities and risks of AI to effectively leverage it and maintain people’s control over the process.
The emerging pattern I’m seeing in my own work is thinking with AI and collaborating with other people
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) February 6, 2025
