About 59% of enterprise-scale organisations (over 1,000 employees) surveyed in India have artificial intelligence (AI) in use in their businesses with early adopters leading the way, according to the ‘IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023’ report.
According to an official release, 59% of IT professionals at large organisations reported that they have deployed AI, while an additional 27% are exploring using the technology. Around six in 10 of IT professionals at enterprises reported that their company is implementing generative AI and another 34% are believed to be exploring it. 74% of IT professionals at companies deploying or exploring AI indicated that their company accelerated their investments in or rollout of AI in the past 24 months in areas such as R&D (67%), reskilling/ workforce development (55%), and building proprietary AI solutions (53%).
From what it’s understood, advances in AI tools that make companies 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%) have been the top factors driving AI adoption. Reportedly, the top five barriers hindering 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 complex or difficult to integrate and scale (27%), ethical concerns (26%), and data complexity (25%). It’s believed that IT professionals have been in agreement that consumers are likely to choose services from companies with ethical AI practices (98% strongly or somewhat agreed) and 94% said 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, minority are understood to have taken steps towards trustworthy AI such as 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%). Seemingly, 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 companies citing AI’s use to address labour or skills shortages, they are believed to have tapped AI to do things such as 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%). Sources suggest that 46% are currently training or reskilling employees to work together with new automation and AI tools. 51% said that employees at their organisation have been looking forward to working with new AI and automation tools.
“I believe the increase in AI adoption and investments by Indian enterprises is an indicator that they are already experiencing the benefits from AI. However, I think there is still an opportunity to accelerate as many businesses are understood to be hesitant to move beyond experimentation and deploy AI at scale. To harness its 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 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,” Sandip Patel, managing director, IBM India and South Asia, said.
