India, May 19: A new market study commissioned by IBM (NYSE: IBM) found that global AI uptake has grown steadily over the past year, to 35 percent of respondents in 2022, further emphasizing that AI growth is poised to accelerate as as it continues to mature and become more accessible and easier to implement.
Other data points from the Global AI Adoption Index 2022, conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, reveal that this growth is due to companies that realize the value of AI when overcoming the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and investing in its digital transformation, while tackling the shortage of talent and skills. In fact, the study shows that AI intake has increased by 4 percentage points compared to 2021.
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For the first time, the report also surveyed companies on their plans to use AI in their sustainability initiatives and found that AI is ready to play a significant role. 66% of IT professionals surveyed said their company is either currently implementing AI or plans to implement AI to accelerate ESG initiatives.
Highlights of the Global AI Adoption Index 2022 include:
• Global AI acceptance is growing steadily and most companies are already using or planning to use AI: Today, 35% of companies report using AI in their business. Compared to 2021, organizations are 13% more likely to adopt AI in 2022. In addition, 42% of companies report researching AI. Large companies are more likely than smaller ones to use AI. Chinese and Indian companies are leaders, with nearly 60% of IT professionals in these countries saying their organization is already actively using AI, compared to lagging markets such as South Korea (22%), Australia (24%), and the United States (25%). ) and the United Kingdom (26%). IT professionals in the financial services, media, energy, automotive, oil and aerospace industries are most likely to report that their company has actively implemented AI, while organizations in industries including retail, travel and government / federal services and healthcare, are the least likely.
• Setting clear data and AI strategies is key to horizontal deployment: The main explanation for the gradual adoption of AI is the need to implement a successful data management strategy and apply AI to this data to achieve business goals. Companies that have not implemented AI are three times more likely to say that they have little or no confidence that their company has the right data management tools. Today, 37% of companies are developing an AI strategy, 28% have a comprehensive strategy in place, and 25% have a strategy that focuses only on limited or specific uses.
• Automation helps to address skills gaps, labor shortages: More than the cost, lack of tools or complexity of projects or data, lack of skills remains the biggest obstacle to adopting AI. At the same time, AI also helps organizations address skills shortages, for example by automating tasks for skilled workers to be more productive, or by using AI-assisted training or employee engagement. Almost one in four companies adopt AI due to a shortage of manpower or skills, and 30% of the world’s IT professionals say employees in their organization are already saving time with new AI and automation software / tools.
• Increasing emphasis on trust – but few concrete actions: Creating reliable, responsible AI practices and AI maturity go hand in hand: The more likely a company is to implement AI, the more likely it is to appreciate the importance of reliability. IT professionals in companies that are currently implementing AI are 17% more likely to report that their business values ​​AI’s clarity than those who simply research AI. But while a growing majority of business leaders say reliable AI is crucial, most organizations have not taken key steps to ensure their AI is reliable and responsible, such as reducing bias (74%), tracking variations in model performance / deviation (68%) and make sure they can explain AI-driven solutions (61%) (Slide 15)
• Building more sustainable operations: AI is poised to play a growing role in the sustainability initiatives of organizations around the world, as more than two-thirds of businesses use or plan to use AI today as part of their sustainability initiatives. One in five companies is already adopting AI due to environmental pressures.
• Popular uses such as automation, acceptance of security devices: Organizations implement AI in a wide variety of applications today, with the most advanced adoption occurring in areas such as IT operations, security and threat detection, and business process automation. Today, a third of companies already use AIs for IT operations (AIOps) to automate key processes, helping them maintain application performance while making resource allocation more efficient. One third of AI companies use natural language processing in areas such as marketing, sales and customer service.
“More than a third of organizations surveyed in the IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022 say they use AI today to respond to countless different factors and pressures,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Software. “They are looking for AI to help them cope with skills and labor shortages, respond to competitive pressures and increasingly respond to environmental pressures. Most respondents said they either already use or plan to use AI as part of their sustainability initiatives. All of these trends point to the growing role that AI plays in both organizations and society. “
Although investment in AI continues to grow, barriers to admission remain, especially for smaller organizations, which are significantly less likely to benefit from AI. The study identified the three biggest barriers to adopting AI for business are: limited experience or knowledge in the field of AI (34%), high prices (29%) and the lack of tools and platforms for developing AI models (25%).
IBM is helping to overcome these barriers and delivering the benefits of AI to more people and organizations in a variety of industries with human-oriented, business-oriented AI. IBM is constantly drawing on the latest innovations in artificial intelligence from IBM Research to provide new enterprise-ready capabilities, automate technical and manual processes such as IT operations, and develop new ways to operationalize and help ensure compliance. of the ethics of AI. In addition, IBM Consulting brings deep expertise in technology, industry and processes to collaborate with customers who embed AI in core business processes and create smart workflows on a large scale.
Methodology
This survey was conducted from March 30 to April 12, 2022, among a sample of 7,502 senior business decision managers with some knowledge / influence on their company’s IT decisions, including 500 respondents in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, China, India, Singapore, Australia, Canada, the UAE and South Korea and 1,000 respondents throughout the Latin American region (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru). The interviews were conducted online and the margin of error for the full sample in each country was +/- 4 percentage points, and the margin of error for the Latin American region was +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% confidence level. See full methodology details at the end of the summary.
