With its "State of AI in the Enterprise, 2^nd Edition," Deloitte questioned 1,100 IT and line-of-business executives at U.S.-based companies about their uses of AI -- and fears related to it. All of the companies, which work in 10 industries, have AI projects in test or implementation stages.

These early adopters, Deloitte found, are bullish about AI's prospects and pleased with their early forays, though they acknowledge that they lack the ability to fully execute on those ambitions. One of the survey's key findings relates to the scarcity of raw material that an AI initiative needs most: data. Executives said data is often difficult to come by because it's protected by privacy policies or it's in a form that isn't suited for AI analysis.

The Deloitte survey also revealed concerns among executives about how uses of AI could make their business more vulnerable to cyberattack. In fact, 16% percent of them say such worries led their organization to pause or scrap an AI project. Even so, respondents see AI as a potential ally in their defense against cybercrime: 41% cited this as their company's prime AI use case.