Diana David: AI leaders' widest gap is talent, 57% vs 4%

ServiceNow's index started in 2024, and David said the early assumption was that scores would only climb. Instead the average fell from 44 to 35, a drop Kahn placed several years into the generative AI boom, before rebounding to 51 this year. David attributed the dip to AI noise that had not yet filtered into company value.

The gap David describes runs alongside a broad experiment already underway: about 59% of surveyed companies are past the pilot phase, but only 9% run agentic, autonomous, multi-step workflows that aren't checked by a human at every step. Among pacesetters that share is 36%, against 2% of others. Meanwhile, 59% of organizations lack long-term HR plans for AI, and 42% of employees say they aren't getting enough AI training. The report puts pacesetters' average ROI at 160%.

David's prescription, rather than a top-down redesign, is to set a vision, align data, choose workflows, assign ownership and iterate, with ServiceNow's AI Control Tower offered as one way to see across an organization. Whether that discipline translates into the commercial value she wants next year's AIQ to measure, and whether the rebound to 51 holds, is the open question for the executives she is addressing.