Businesses Are Excitedly Pursuing AI, But Worry About Trust, Data, Ethics: Salesforce

Nearly half of customer service teams, over two-fifths of salespeople and a third of marketers say they’ve fully implemented artificial intelligence to augment their work. Yet, 77% of business leaders cite issues around trusted data and ethics that could halt their AI deployments, according to new research by Salesforce Inc.  

The Trends in AI for CRM report analysed statistics from several studies and found that companies worried they could miss out on the opportunities that generative AI presents if data underpinning large language models isn’t grounded in their own trusted customer records.

At the same time, respondents expressed concerns about a lack of clear company policies to govern the ethical use of the technology, as well as a complex vendor landscape of LLMs that prompted 80% of enterprises to report they currently use multiple models.

While the report found AI adoption rates are expected to climb dramatically, only 10% of people today fully trust AI to help them make informed decisions, and 59% of organisations said they lack the unified data strategies that boost AI’s reliability and accuracy.

Eighty percent of those who have used AI at work said it makes them more productive, a key driver for the rapid acceleration of AI adoption among the workforce. Yet, only 21% of surveyed workers said their company has clearly formed policies around approved tools and use cases.

Employees aren’t waiting for these policies to be put in place, with many using unapproved (55%) or explicitly banned (40%) tools. Additionally, 69% said their employers haven’t provided training on the use of AI in their workplace.

Seventy-four percent of the general population is concerned about the unethical use of AI, according to the report. Companies that focus on end-user control are in the strongest position to build customer trust as they build their AI strategies, with 56% of respondents to the same survey signalling their openness to AI under such circumstances.

The report highlighted that the top factors that deepen trust in AI include greater visibility into use, human validation of outputs and more user control.

“This is a pivotal moment for the world as business leaders across industries are looking to AI to unlock growth, efficiency and customer loyalty,” said Clara Shih, chief executive officer of Salesforce AI. “But success requires much more than an LLM. Enterprise deployments need trusted data, user access control, vector search, audit trails and citations, data masking, low-code builders and seamless UI integration in order to succeed,” Shih added.