Artificial intelligence (AI) is unlocking use cases that are transforming industries across a wide swath of the world's economy. From infrastructure that "self-heals" to radically reimagined (and touchless) customer service and experience; from large scale hyper-personalization to automatically created marketing messages and images leveraging Generative AI tools like ChatGPT--it is all a reality today. These AI solutions can powerfully augment and sometimes radically outperform most traditional business roles. This article is a collaborative effort by Joshan Abraham, Jorge Amar, Yuval Atsmon, Miguel Frade, and Tomás Lajous, representing views from McKinsey's Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice. The impact from these solutions is becoming evident.

Since most companies are early in their AI journey, a key obstacle is to rack up early wins that validate the business value of AI projects. For enterprises this means convincing business executives that AI can ultimately deliver billions of dollars in value to the company. Clearly it's critical to pick problems that are big and contribute meaningfully to the business. One of the more common mistakes is actually from AI projects that are halted prematurely. Focusing on a big problem allows you to ask for time for things to play out.