How to address generative AI adoption challenges within firms

By Jessica Barboza, OSCPA marketing and communications intern  

Generative AI is taking the world by storm with no end in sight. According to Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, mastering AI will be essential for companies to succeed in the coming years. 

Still, AI is being perceived as a black box, making it challenging for decision-makers to determine the most effective way to adopt it in the workplace. 

“We're seeing that companies are rushing to talk about generative AI because they see its potential to revolutionize the operations of the organization, accounting functions, enhance how customers are experiencing all the things that you can do and creating innovation,” Tsipursky said. “But they're also facing a lot of hurdles.” 

Tsipursky’s upcoming book with Georgetown University Press, From Resistance to Results: The Psychology of Generative AI Integration, will focus on helping leaders understand and overcome generative AI adoption challenges within their firms. 

“The book addresses one of the most pressing challenges that accounting corporations are facing today: how to incorporate generative AI seamlessly into their business structures while overcoming employee resistance, as well as fostering engagement by accountants with this transformative technology and creating a learning culture that embraces change,” Tsipursky said. 

To succeed in this approach, it’s fundamental that decision-makers learn about the psychology of change, Tsipursky said. This includes learning about cognitive biases, the errors we make because of how our mind is wired; Status Quo Bias, the tendency to favor the status quo, even if a new situation might be better for us; and understanding where employees’ anxieties and intuitions come from.  

“There’s anxiety around change and around people's jobs being automated, but there are strategies to counteract these biases, such as framing AI adoption as a necessity for the future. It’s something that you want to help employees with,” Tsipursky said. 

Firms should be clear and honest with their employees, getting them engaged in the process of generative AI adoption early, Tsipursky said. It’s important to explain to employees that while the goal is to integrate generative AI, employees will be helped, upskilled and educated in the process.  

At the same time, firms should build a culture that celebrates, praises and supports learning how to use generative AI technology and incentivizes collaboration to figure out case studies where their company can effectively adopt it. 

“A law firm I worked with recently, which is very similar to in terms of professional services that accountants provide, is not letting anyone go,” Tsipursky said. “They're just being more productive and they're taking more market share from competitors because their people are able to be more productive and still bill a good amount.” 

With new tools coming out, more guidance is needed to use generative AI effectively. Software needs to be updated constantly, and users need to be open to continuous learning, Tsipursky said. 

“You need to learn how it functions, and you need to learn some case studies,” Tsipursky said. “You need to experiment with it, you need to play with it and you need to figure out how to adapt it to your scenario.” 

Using generative AI for low-level, personal tasks, like creating recipes or explaining complex topics, is a great way for users to familiarize themselves with the technology, Tsipursky said. 

“It's not a matter of not fearing AI; I think it's a matter of respecting AI capacities,” Tsipursky said. “I'm worried about AI. I think it will be good enough, in the next few years, to do a significant amount of what I'm doing. It's a matter of respecting it and sufficiently understanding that it's an incredibly powerful tool.”