Enterprise AI in the Cloud

3Addressing the Challenges with Enterprise AI

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

—Thomas A. Edison

This chapter might just be your ally on your path to AI transformation. As someone keen on implementing AI, whether you are a business strategist, technology leader, data scientist, or curious innovator, you must be aware that deploying AI, ML, and generative AI solutions is exciting, but it can also be like navigating a minefield. That's because AI isn't just about algorithms and models; it's also intrinsically connected to data, infrastructure, change management, regulations, and strategic decision-making. You will soon realize that an AI transformation is markedly different from a digital transformation.

This chapter is designed to help you understand the technical challenges, ethical dilemmas, and strategic hurdles. Recognizing these challenges is the first step toward preparing your organization for them. In later chapters, I guide you with a practical, systematic methodology to address these challenges with clearly defined steps, best practices, case studies, hands-on exercises, and templates. Each chapter in this book maps to the tasks in the phases shown in Figure 3.1.

Note that these challenges by no means represent a complete list. Although the challenges are many, they are not insurmountable. You can convert these challenges into opportunities for innovation and growth based on the insights ...