Artificial Intelligence Already Brings Profits — More to Come?

Will artificial intelligence deliver on its bold promise for businesses?

Artificial intelligence is  already profitable for many companies, and they expect more profits from AI in the years ahead, according to a recent report from Infosys.

The report, titled “Amplifying Human Potential: Towards Purposeful Artificial Intelligence” polled 1,600 senior decision makers from large businesses all over the world. The companies surveyed invested an average of $6.7 million in AI in the past 12 months and have been actively using AI for an average of 24 months.

Artificial intelligence benefits

According to the report:

• Roughly 76 percent of the respondents said they consider AI critical to the success of their organization.

• Businesses that have fully or partially deployed AI technologies saw benefits in the following categories: automating processes and tasks (46 percent); cost savings (44 percent); increasing productivity (44 percent) and increasing revenue (39 percent).
•  By 2020, almost all 97 percent of respondents believe AI can generate a significant ROI impact through both an expected 39 percent boost to revenues on average and a 37 percent reduction in costs.
•  Only one in 10 of those polled, however, said they believe their organization is taking full advantage of the capabilities and benefits of AI. Organizations don’t expect artificial intelligence technologies to hit “mature” adoption for at least another three years. Only 25 percent state that AI technologies are fully deployed and working as expected. Four in 10 respondents said that ease of use, interoperability and time to implement AI all need improvement before it can be effective. Other areas of concern included data security and job security.

AI types and business sectors

Around 65 percent of respondents say that their organization has deployed or plans to deploy big data automation for collecting, processing and storing data. Over 50 percent said their company was looking at predictive or prescriptive analytics or machine learning; 44 percent cited use of database technologies; and 31 percent said the company was looking at deep-learning neural networks.

IT departments are the leading adopters of artificial intelligence (66 percent) followed by operations (34 percent), business development (33 percent), marketing (29 percent) and customer service (28 percent).

The business sectors with “mature” levels of AI adoption that exceeded 50 percent include pharmaceuticals/life sciences, automotive and aerospace, telecoms, energy, oil, gas and utilities; manufacturing; fast-moving consumer goods; and healthcare. Financial services and retail came in at 47 percent and 44 percent, respectively. (Related: “Is marketing the clearest ROI path for artificial intelligence?”).

Three sectors seeing AI disruption include automotive, pharmaceuticals, and energy.

Costs and ethics

Approximately 57 percent of respondents said the cost of AI solutions is a barrier their organization faces. A slight majority of those surveyed also said the business feared change, lacked in-house skills, or cited a lack of available and proven AI solutions,

Fully two-thirds of the respondents admitted they have not fully considered ethical issues related to AI. Approximately 90 percent said their employees face challenges or have concerns about AI adoption, and nearly the same number said their vendors and customers also have concerns. Just over half of those surveryed agreed that ethical concerns pose a significant obstacle to the application of AI.

For those businesses who said they plan to replace some jobs with artificial intelligence, 80 percent said they plan to retain and retrain those workers rather than lay them off. About 53 percent of respondents said they are displaced already investing in skills development.

The industries leading the retain and retrain movement are consumer goods (94 percent) aerospace and automotive (87 percent) energy, including petroleum (80 percent), and pharmaceutical (78 percent).|

For the full report and AI maturity index, please visit: Infosys.com/AImaturity.

More on this topic:

Cognitive computing