ASPEN — Technology executives speaking at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen stated that companies must prioritize focused, high-impact artificial intelligence (AI) execution rather than launching numerous unfocused pilot programs.

Brett Greenstein, the chief AI officer at West Monroe, noted that business executives typically identify three critical areas for advancement. "An executive knows there are three things that will move the needle for their business—not 300 things. But if you ask everyone how many use cases they have, they all have 300—but they're not all equally important," Greenstein said.

Sean Bruich, SVP and CTO of Amgen, warned that an abundance of AI pilots within a company can impede progress. "The explosion of pilots around AI inside a company can become an incredible drag on your ability to move quickly, because each one of those has a champion and a team and a set of KPIs and a data engineering squad," Bruich said.

Dan Gill, the chief product officer at Carvana, contrasted the value of completing one project versus partially progressing on multiple projects. "Getting one thing all the way done is much more valuable than five things progressed to 20% each," Gill said. He added, "[AI means] prototyping is cheap, and documentation is cheap, and code generation is cheap, and suddenly it's so easy to do things—but the reality is getting that number one thing all the way done and iterating on it really tightly is much, much, much more valuable than just advancing lots of stuff." Gill also remarked on the transformative nature of AI, stating, "I think we've crossed the Rubicon. The ships are burnt. There is no going back, but the future is bright."

Nizar Trigui, the chief technology officer at GXO, indicated that AI initiatives require leadership from the highest levels of an organization. "We all found what we're doing is no longer just a technology-led transformation. This has to be a business-led transformation—it has to be led from the top. It has to be from the board. It has to be from the CEO—the entire executive team. And they need to be engaged in that entire transformation," Trigui said.