A significant 42% of enterprise-scale organizations (with over 1,000 employees) have incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into their business strategy, according to the latest research commissioned by tech giant IBM.
Being the first to recognize and harness the power of AI, 59% of those surveyed are already at the next level of their AI adoption, stating that they are in the process of accelerating and increasing their investments in the technology.
“More accessible AI tools, the drive for automation of key processes, and increasing amounts of AI embedded into off-the-shelf business applications are top factors driving the expansion of AI at the enterprise level,” said Rob Thomas, senior vice president of IBM Software.
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The “IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023” report, based on research conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, reveals that 38% of IT professionals at enterprises report that their company is actively implementing generative AI, and another 42% are exploring it.
AI use cases
In terms of market, organizations in India stands out among the early and massive adopters, with 59% stating they are using AI in their business. It is followed by the UAE (58%), Singapore (53%), and China (50%) at the fourth spot. Two of the lagging markets in Europe are Spain (28%) and France (26%), joined by Australia (29%).
“We see organizations leveraging AI for use cases where I believe the technology can most quickly have a profound impact like IT automation, digital labor, and customer care,” Thomas said.
When it comes to industry, the financial services industry is most likely to use AI, according to the report, with about half of IT professionals within that industry reporting that their company has actively deployed AI. This could be attributed to the increasing use of digital payments and other online services.
AI investments
IBM noted that the majority of surveyed companies actively deploying or exploring AI have accelerated their rollout or investments in the past 24 months. While China may not be the first in AI use, the economic powerhouse leads in investment, with 85% of organizations most likely to accelerate AI rollout, followed by India (74%) and the UAE (72%). Meanwhile, businesses in the UK (40%), Australia (38%), and Canada (35%) were the least likely to accelerate the rollout.
What is driving AI adoption? The survey highlights the advances in AI tools that make them more accessible (45%), the need to reduce costs and automate key processes (42%), and the increasing amount of AI embedded in standard off-the-shelf business applications (37%) as the top factors driving AI adoption. For IT professionals, the two most important changes to AI in recent years are solutions that are easier to deploy (43%) and the increased prevalence of data, AI, and automation skills (42%).
Barriers
As expected, the automation of IT processes (33%) is the most popular AI use case. The cybersecurity industry comes in second, using it for threat detection (26%).
What prevents companies from leveraging AI is limited AI skills and expertise (33%). As the pace of technology is constantly changing, upskilling is of paramount importance in the industry. It also doesn’t help that not many organizations don’t recognize the importance of structured data, with 25% of respondents stating it is among the barriers that stop them from using AI. And then there are the ethical concerns (23%).
This survey was conducted in November 2023 among a representative sample of 8,584 IT professionals globally.