Global AI Adoption Index 2021

Companies are accelerating the introduction of artificial intelligence as a result of the pandemic, IBM revealed in a recent global survey. Although AI solutions that enhance the resilience of organizations are now much more available as technology advances, IT respondents say projects are still struggling with the lack of the right professional skills and the complexity of the data environment.

Your company already uses artificial intelligence , said nearly a third of the IT professionals surveyed and a further 43 per cent reported that the introduction and preparation of AI had been accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Larger companies are nearly 70 percent more likely than smaller businesses (18 percentage points difference) to actively use artificial intelligence to support their business, while just over a third of respondents (34 percent) say they have not yet implemented a single AI in their organization.

Although this year’s results of the annual survey on the spread of artificial intelligence (Global AI Adoption Index 2021) show that AI acceptance has hardly changed from last year’s level, in serving changing business needs, this technology has become more sought after than ever before. Artificial intelligence is already having a tangible impact on the way companies operate today, from virtual assistants communicating with customers to automating key workflows or even monitoring network security.

– Now that organizations are in post-pandemic times data from our survey show a significant boom in AI investment, said Rob Thomas, vice president of cloud and data platform technologies at IBM, when the study was published. – The vast majority of investments focus on three key competencies for the business use of artificial intelligence, IT and process automation, building trust in technology and its results, and a better understanding of business language. We are convinced that even this increased investment will continue as organizations look for new, innovative solutions for their digital transformation in the hybrid cloud, with the support of AI.

A similar finding was made in a recent survey (2021 CEO Study) of the IBM Institute for Business Value, according to which more than half of the business leaders surveyed expect tangible business benefits from the use of artificial intelligence over the next few years (see our article Self-Testing for Companies in our issue 2021/05)

Dialogue with the Machine

The online survey underlying the Global AI Adoption Index 2021 was commissioned by IBM in April this year from Morning Consult. A representative sample of 5,501 business decision-makers surveyed in a total of 15 countries from the United States and Latin America to the European Union, India, and Singapore to China consisted of executives with detailed insights or significant roles in IT decision-making regarding AI deployment. ). Globally, a third (34 percent) of IT professionals surveyed said their organization will also spend the next 12 months implementing AI solutions and developing the skills needed to do so. The responses revealed that from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the technology becoming more accessible, there are a number of challenges and opportunities to launch AI projects and prepare for such investments, thus encouraging companies to evaluate market solutions, development tools and services

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Rob Thomas, Vice President, IBM

For example, organizations have spectacularly stepped up to automate processes. No less than 80 percent of them are already using such software solutions, or are planning to do so in the next 12 months, and more than a third have opted for the technology to increase employee efficiency by automating in a pandemic. Other respondents aimed to strengthen the resilience of the organization with technology, such as automation to help resolve IT incidents quickly.

For business use, it is essential that artificial intelligence is reliable and explainable, respondents agreed. 91 percent of professionals who use the technology say it is critical that companies can explain their AI-supported decisions. However, recognition, however important, alone is not enough for reliable AI. More than half of the respondents pointed out that, among other things, the lack of necessary professional skills, the inflexibility of governance tools and the disproportionate nature of data leading to bias, as well as inadequate preparation, make it significantly more difficult to account for artificial intelligence.

Not only the volume but also the distribution of the generated data is growing rapidly in companies. More than two-thirds of IT professionals who already use AI said they draw data from more than twenty different sources for the models. Further widespread adoption of artificial intelligence will therefore require solutions to run AI applications at the source of the data, with nearly 90 percent of respondents saying

According to the survey, one of the most vibrant areas of AI deployment natural language processing (NLP). Nearly half of the companies are already using this technology to add a dialogue-based interface to their automated processes, and one in four companies in the other camp is also preparing for it over the next 12 months. The most common use case of NLP is customer service, with 52 percent of IT professionals surveyed saying their organization uses the technology to improve the customer experience or plans to implement it within a year. Most respondents also singled out customer service as one of the AI ​​use cases on which your company is more focused on the epidemic.

Lack of knowledge

The same three factors are the main obstacles to the wider adoption of artificial intelligence in companies, which was also mentioned by respondents in last year’s survey. IT professionals continue to see the limited expertise and knowledge associated with AI (39 percent), the increasing complexity and fragmentation of the data environment, ie data silos (32 percent), and the lack of tools and platforms needed to develop AI models (28 percent). the biggest obstacle to the faster adoption of technology. While the problem of data complexity and data silos affects larger organizations to a greater extent than smaller ones, deficiencies in AI expertise are more pronounced in smaller companies.

At least one of the three companies is facing with various difficulties in introducing and applying artificial intelligence. Based on the responses, organizations often struggle with the data analysis needed to make AI reliable and surveyable (39 percent), extend artificial intelligence at the enterprise level (37 percent), streamline the data environment, and create analytical foundations to meet business needs (37 percent). collecting and simplifying their access (37 percent). Speaking in the colors of larger companies, IT professionals said more often that data analysis and the extension of AI at the organizational level is the biggest challenge for them. IT professionals working in smaller companies are more likely to have the most difficulty in coping with data collection.

While artificial intelligence is facing further, accelerating penetration, some companies face a number of challenges in implementing AI, IBM pointed out. According to the results of this year’s survey, these barriers have not been overcome, warning that the market always has room for improvement in terms of capabilities and solutions, both on the user and supplier side.

Article by Computerworld August 2021 Published in issue 24.

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