Considered as one of emerging technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) may soon become new normal as adoption grows, according to Gartner’s 2019 CIO Survey.

Organizations that have implemented some form of AI grew 270 percent in the past four years and tripled in the past year.

“Four years ago, AI implementation was rare, only 10 percent of survey respondents reported that their enterprises had deployed AI or would do so shortly. For 2019, that number has leaped to 37 percent — a 270-percent increase in four years,” said Chris Howard, research vice president at Gartner in a media release. “If you are a CIO and your organization doesn’t use AI, chances are high that your competitors do and this should be a concern.”

Gartner regularly conducts the 2019 CIO Survey to determine the challenges and needs of CIOs and other IT leaders and help them align these with their agenda for the coming year.

Gartner gathered data from more than 3,000 CIO respondents in 89 countries across major industries, representing $15 trillion in revenue and public-sector budgets and $284 billion in IT spending.

Skills shortage

While the demand seems to have been gaining ground, with AI deployment tripled in the past year posting a growth of 37 percent today compared to 25 percent in 2018. Gartner attributes this to the fact that “AI capabilities have matured significantly and thus enterprises are more willing to implement the technology.”

“We still remain far from general AI that can wholly take over complex tasks, but we have now entered the realm of AI-augmented work and decision science — what we call ‘augmented intelligence,” Howard said.

This also came in to light of CIOs acknowledging that sustainable digital transformation and task automation go hand in hand. AI has become an integral part of every digital strategy and is already used in a variety of applications. Survey results show that 52 percent of telco organizations deploy chatbots and 38 percent of healthcare providers rely on computer-assisted diagnostics. Other operational use cases for AI are fraud protection and consumer fragmentation.

CIOs need to be creative

The more enterprises work with AI, the clearer the deployment challenge becomes. Fifty-four percent of respondents to a Gartner Research Circle Survey view skill shortage as the biggest challenge facing their organization.

Gartner AI Development Strategies Survey was conducted online from April 5 to April 21, 2017, among 83 Gartner Research Circle members, a Gartner-managed panel composed of IT and business leaders.

“In order to stay ahead, CIOs need to be creative. If there is no AI talent available, another possibility is to invest in training programs for employees with backgrounds in statistics and data management. Some organizations also create job shares with ecosystem and business partners,” Howard said.

Image from Pixabay