Over the next decade, AI will impact all industries and help shape which companies, teams and executives come out ahead. This is why we’ve seen so many early AI adopters in sports, where even the slightest competitive advantage can be the difference between first and second place.   

Take last year’s US Open, for example, where IBM watsonx™ projected the level of advantage or disadvantage of all players in the singles draw. Overseas, Sevilla FC launched a tool built on watsonx to provide scouts with comprehensive data-driven identification and evaluation of potential recruits. And EDGE3 will embed to IBM watsonx to help universities and athletes navigate the increasingly complex world of recruiting by improving the decision-making process for college programs and players.  

These examples go hand-in-hand with rapid enterprise adoption. For instance, we are working together with Adobe to embed watsonx into their platform to support key industries. With SAP, we’re working together to incorporate additional AI, machine learning and other intelligent technologies into SAP solutions that can lead to better business outcomes for our joint customers. 

Companies of all shapes, sizes and industries are taking the first step in their AI journey. Here are two questions they should be asking: 

Is AI right for my business?  

Absolutely. Whether you lead a high-growth startup or an established enterprise, you’re likely playing in a highly competitive market where AI can add enormous value to your business. Start your AI journey by determining your use case and what you are trying to accomplish.  

Today, partners across industries are embedding IBM watsonx into their workflows, offerings and solutions in different ways to supercharge their existing technology. For example, by integrating watsonx with Box’s Content Cloud, customers can use IBM AI with proprietary data housed in Box to help them accelerate business processes. In the financial investment and wealth management space, QuantumStreet AI offers a comprehensive AI platform which embeds watsonx for professional investors, representing USD 6 billion of client assets covering 50,000 publicly traded global companies and asset classes. 

IBM’s approach, which uses smaller models tuned to specific business use cases, also helps lower the AI barrier to entry by helping enterprises adopt specific models that run on cheaper infrastructure and offer more flexibility to be deployed on public cloud, on private cloud or on-premises. 

How can I ensure responsible AI innovation for my company? 

Today’s corporate leaders shouldn’t be questioning whether to explore AI for their business, but how to do so responsibly. When AI is applied to the enterprise, there is no room for error—it must be implemented with the right guardrails in place.  

A key ingredient in responsible AI is governance, which should be the top concern for every developer, software provider and business with plans to implement AI. That is why the availability of watsonx.governance was such a tentpole moment for IBM. We provide enterprises with a toolkit that helps them manage risk, embrace transparency and anticipate compliance with future AI-focused regulation. Partners that choose to use their data can take advantage of watsonx.data, a fit-for-purpose data store that helps them scale AI workloads for all their data anywhere it resides. An important distinction for IBM is our longstanding policy that such data belongs to the partner. Alternatively, many partners use watsonx.ai, which includes the Granite model series (with openly shared data sources).  

Our partners look at data use just as seriously as we do. Take our relationship with Dun & Bradstreet, which combines Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud with watsonx to help enterprises responsibly expand their use of generative AI. Another IBM Partner, Boxes, is using IBM watsonx Assistant™ to help retailers gather customer insights and generate buyer-ready reports to bring forward new products and get samples in the hands of consumers. And partners like Jaxon.ai are using watsonx foundation models to address some of the other challenging aspects of AI, such as hallucinations.  

I’m proud that IBM draws on decades of industry leadership, investment and research in AI to help guide partners along every step of their AI journey. No matter your company’s age, size, shape or industry, IBM has the right tools and partner program to help your business adopt and scale responsible AI.