IBM’s market research reveals accelerated AI growth spurred by lower barriers of access.
The rise of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) service offerings is changing the way businesses operate in fundamental ways. Many organizations that have adopted AI systems use them to automate key workflows, communicate with customers via virtual assistants, and even manage network security. As others look at the early adopters of AI with envy, the industry can anticipate a boon in the near future, according to IBM’s Global AI Adoption Index 2021 report conducted by Morning Consult.

The report surveyed IT decision-making staff across 5,501 businesses around the world. The survey reached out to 500 organizations each in China, France, India, Germany, Italy, Spain, Singapore, the United Kingdom, 501 within the United States, and 1,000 across Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Peru). This allowed IBM to get a global understanding of the current state of things, as well as coming trends and opportunities that have emerged after over a year in a locked down, COVID-19 stricken world. The poll was conducted in April 2021 and provides the most up-to-date snapshot of AI adoption at the time of writing.
Among those surveyed, 43 percent of respondents reported that their businesses have accelerated the rollout of AI technologies due to the disruption caused by the pandemic, although the trend was stronger among large organizations, which had the resources to become early adopters of this technology. Larger companies were 31 percent more likely to adopt AI technologies compared to smaller organizations. The key barriers to access were increasing data complexity and a general lack of AI skills in the workforce—with the deployment of the technology outpacing the human capital and trained data scientists expected to be in short supply in the future. Thankfully, services that reduce the reliance on data scientists have been making progress in the market, democratizing some of the work involved in data cleanup and model training.
“As organizations move to a post-pandemic world, data from the Global AI Adoption Index 2021 underscores a major uptick in AI investment,” notes Rob Thomas, the SVP of IBM Cloud and Data Platform. “A large majority of those investments continue to be focused on three key abilities that define AI for business—automating IT and processes, building trust in AI outcomes, and understanding the language of business. We believe that these investments will continue as customers look for new, innovative ways to drive their digital transformations by taking advantage of hybrid cloud and AI.”

Although AI adoption is poised for growth, addressing the barriers to access will be the next step in expanding the number of AI users, and thus the customer base for AI products and services. IBM is working to help accelerate adoption by delivering AI that is ready for deployment and addresses the actual needs of businesses. The company is continually working on improvements to IBM Watson, which are based on IBM Research. These improvements enable organizations to better understand the language of business, automate processes and IT services, and drive the trust and reliability in AI outcomes. IBM’s Global Business Services bring deep technology, industry, and process expertise and experience to help cocreate solutions for its customers, embedding AI into core business processes to create scalable intelligent workflows.
The key findings of the IBM Global AI Adoption Survey can be summarized within five main categories:
- The COVID-19 pandemic sped up the adoption of automation within various industries.
- Business adoption of AI has remained relatively flat, but significant investments in AI are planned.
- The technology provides the ability to access data from anywhere, anytime.
- There is a need for AI data to be trustworthy and explain how it arrived at a decision.
- There is a heavy reliance on natural language processing, which leads the way in AI technology adoption.
COVID-19 has sped up the adoption of automation within various industries. Key workflow processes have now been automated across thousands of businesses, saving countless hours in human processing times and reducing error rates across the board. Of surveyed companies, 38 percent used automation to improve employee productivity during the pandemic, while 80 percent have already adopted the use of automation software or are in the process of adapting AI software for their business needs. Some respondents have been able to identify routine IT incidents and have used AI to manage the workflow resolutions for their tickets.
Business adoption of AI was basically flat, but significant investments in AI are anticipated. While the ratio of companies already using AI has maintained relatively stable at about one-third of the survey’s respondents, new advances in AI technology that make it more accessible, as well as the competitive advantage that early AI adopters have been able to gain, has 43 percent of responding companies looking to utilize AI within the next 12 months. The new generation of companies adopting AI for their business needs will soon outnumber the early adopters—and more than double the number of companies using the technology. This next wave of AI adopters will need to rely on technologies that make AI training more accessible as the demand for data scientists will continue to grow.

AI data needs to be trustworthy and tell a story about how it arrived at a decision. In all, 91 percent of survey respondents noted that having the full story behind the data helps them to trust the AI processes better. The explanation of how the software arrived at a decision is paramount. As human factors in decision-making, such as inflexible administrative (or legislative) processes as well as a general lack of familiarity with all the relevant information that the AIsystem will access to arrive at a decision, drive the need for a more storytelling-based approach.
Data from anywhere and at anytime—full connectivity always. Aside from the obvious requirements of employees working from home and the need for users to access information , information used by AI for business processes also needs to be accessible from anywhere at any time. Data is everywhere and the AI used in business processes involves bringing together information from different sources and making sense of it. Over two-thirds of surveyed companies drew data from more than 20 sources to inform their AI. This depth and breadth of information needs seamless information flow to operate at peak capacity. This need for a live connection is highlighted by the fact that 90 percent of responders said that being able to run AI projects where the data is located will be key in their adoption of AI as a technology solution for business needs.

Natural language processing technology leads the way. Most natural language processing (NLP) applications in businesses have occurred in customer service. In all, 52 percent of the IT professionals surveyed reported that their company has adopted NLP solutions to address customer experience, with the COVID-19 pandemic being a major driver behind NLP adoption for customer service needs. Nearly half of the businesses surveyed used applications by NLP, with another one-quarter of organizations planning to adopt the technology within the next year. This proliferation of NLP will not only help these companies improve their workflow, but the increased dataset that will now be available to the AI systems will also no doubt lead to additional refinements in the systems’ understanding of natural language.