59% of Indian enterprises have actively deployed AI, highest among countries surveyed: IBM report
New research
commissioned by IBM found that about 59% of enterprise-scale organizations
(over 1,000 employees) surveyed in India have AI actively in use in their
businesses. The ‘IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023’ found early adopters are
leading the way, with 74% of those Indian enterprises already working with AI,
having accelerated their investments in AI in the past 24 months in areas like
R&D and workforce reskilling.
Ongoing challenges
for AI adoption remain, including hiring employees with the right skillsets and
ethical concerns, inhibiting businesses from adopting AI technologies into
their operations. Therefore, in 2024 addressing these inhibitors would be a
priority, like providing people with the relevant skills to work with AI and
having a robust AI governance framework.
“The increase in AI
adoption and investments by Indian enterprises is a good indicator that they
are already experiencing the benefits from AI. However, there is still a
significant opportunity to accelerate as many businesses are hesitant to move
beyond experimentation and deploy AI at scale,” said Sandip Patel, Managing
Director, IBM India & South Asia. “To harness its full potential in the
coming months, data and AI governance tools are going to be critical for
building AI models responsibly that enterprises can trust and confidently
adopt. Without the use of governance tools, AI can expose companies to data
privacy issues, legal complications, and ethical dilemmas – cases of which we
have already seen plaguing many across the world,” he added.
Highlights for
India from the ‘IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023’ conducted by Morning Consult
on behalf of IBM:
Over
the last several years, AI adoption has remained steady at large organizations
surveyed:
· Today, 59% of IT professionals at large organizations report
that they have actively deployed AI while an additional 27% are
actively exploring using the technology.
· Similarly, around 6 in 10 of IT professionals at enterprises report that
their company is actively implementing generative AI and another 34% are
exploring it.
· 74% of IT professionals at companies deploying or exploring AI
indicate that their company has accelerated their investments in or rollout of
AI in the past 24 months in areas like R&D (67%), reskilling/
workforce development (55%) and building proprietary AI solutions (53%).
Easier
to use AI tools and the need to reduce costs and automate processes are driving
AI adoption among surveyed companies:
· Advances in AI tools that make them more accessible (59%), the
need to reduce costs and automate key processes (48%), and the
increasing amount of AI embedded into standard off the shelf business applications (47%) are
the top factors driving AI adoption.
The
skills gap remains the biggest barrier to AI adoption in India:
· The top 5 barriers hindering successful AI adoption at enterprises both
exploring or deploying AI are limited AI skills and expertise (30%), lack of
tools/platforms for developing AI models (28%), AI projects are too complex or
difficult to integrate and scale (27%), ethical concerns (26%) and too much
data complexity (25%).
The
need for trustworthy and governed AI is well understood, but barriers are
making it difficult for surveyed companies in India to put into practice:
· IT professionals are largely in agreement that consumers are more likely
to choose services from companies with transparent and ethical AI
practices (98% strongly or somewhat agree) and 94% say being able to
explain how their AI reached a decision is important to their
business (among companies exploring or deploying AI).
· However, despite understanding its importance only a minority are taking
key steps towards trustworthy AI like reducing bias (36%), tracking
data provenance (46%), making sure they can explain the decisions of
their AI models (52%), or developing ethical AI
policies (46%).
· The top barriers for developing trustworthy and ethical AI are the lack
of an AI strategy (57%), lack of company guidelines (55%) and lack of AI
governance and management tools that work across all data environments (55%).
Among
surveyed organizations in India, AI is already having an impact on the
workforce:
· Among companies citing AI’s use to address labor or skills shortages,
they are tapping AI to do things like reduce manual or repetitive tasks with
automation tools (63%), automate customer self-service answers and
actions (63%) or using AI to improve recruiting and human resources (56%).
· 46% are currently training or reskilling employees to work together
with new automation and AI tools. 51% said that employees at their organization
are excited to work with new AI and automation tools.
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