9 AI Benefits Enterprises Are Experiencing Today
The early adopters of artificial intelligence say that it is having a positive effect on their products and processes — as well as their workforces.
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Most analysts and business executives believe that in the very near future artificial intelligence (AI) will offer huge advantages to the organizations that successfully adopt this emerging technology. As a result, enterprises are making plans to invest in AI.
IDC has predicted that revenues for cognitive and artificial intelligence systems will total $12.5 billion this year and will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54.4% through 2020 when the market will exceed $46 billion. Gartner has forecast that "by 2020, AI technologies will be virtually pervasive in almost every new software product and service." And a November 2017 Forrester survey found that 70% of enterprises plant to implement some form of AI over the next twelve months.
However, few organizations are experiencing the benefits of AI today. In fact, when Deloitte set out to survey executives about artificial intelligence, it found that only 17% of the 1,500 senior executives it initially contacted were familiar with the basic concepts of AI and how their companies were using the technology.
Part of the problem may be that AI has so many potential uses that organizations aren't sure how to get started with the technology.
For those that do get started, though, the benefits can be significant. Among the AI users surveyed by Deloitte, 83% said that their companies had achieved moderate (53%) or substantial (30%) benefits as a result of the technology. And the more AI deployments an organization had, the more likely they were to report substantial benefits.
So what were those benefits?
Deloitte recently published the results of its survey of aggressive AI users in a report titled "Bullish on the Business Value of Cognitive." It revealed that enterprises that have adopted artificial intelligence have experienced nine key benefits, which are highlighted in the following slideshow.
Survey respondents were asked to rank the top three benefits their companies had experienced as a result of deploying AI. The number one response, which a majority (51%) of executives ranked among the top three benefits, was to "enhance the features, functions, and/or performance of our products and services." That majority included 19% of those surveyed who selected this response as the number one benefit of AI.
Executives from a wide range of different industries said that AI is making their products and services "smarter." Well-known examples of AI-enhanced products or services include Spotify, Netflix and smartphones with voice assistants like Siri and Cortana. Technology companies in particular have been quick to incorporate artificial intelligence into their offerings, and the report noted that the majority of the world's largest software companies offer at least one product or service that uses cognitive technology.
More than a third of the senior executives (36%) surveyed said that AI was helping them improve internal business operations, and 12% said this was the top benefit of the technology. The report pointed out that this optimization takes different forms in different kinds of businesses. For example, a distributor might use AI to streamline its supply chain. A cloud computing provider might use AI to manage heat and reduce power consumption in its data centers. A Wall Street firm might use AI to improve the way it executes stock trades. Or a factory might use AI to make its assembly line more efficient.
The same percentage (36%) of the business executives surveyed selected "free up workers to be more creative by automating tasks" as one of the top three benefits of AI. And, 10% listed this as the top benefit.
Many workers fear that they might be replaced by artificial intelligence. However, many analysts forecast that AI will actually create more jobs than it eliminates. This early survey seems to support that opinion. Organizations are using AI to handle boring, repetitive tasks, but for the most part, they aren't eliminating jobs. Instead, the use of AI is giving human workers more time to focus on the more interesting and innovative aspects of their jobs.
More than a third of respondents (35%) in the Deloitte survey said the one of the top three benefits of artificial intelligence is that it is helping them to make better decisions. This response was the number one choice of 14% of those surveyed.
In many cases, this improved decision-making is enabled by analytics tools that have machine learning capabilities. Organizations are using these tools to sift through their data — particularly their unstructured data — to find insights that would otherwise remain hidden. This has been one of the most popular early applications of artificial intelligence within enterprises, as 58% of those surveyed said that statistical machine learning was one of the ways their organization was using AI technology today.
Organizations aren't only using artificial intelligence to enhance their existing products and services, they are also using the technology to help them create totally new products and services that they didn't offer previously. Just under a third (32%) of those surveyed said AI was helping them create new products, and 12% said this was the number one benefit of the technology. According to the report, organizations are creating AI-enabled products for both consumers and business customers, and many of these "smart" products include voice recognition and/or chatbot capabilities.
Marketing and sales both generate a lot of statistics — statistics that are prime candidates for analysis with machine learning algorithms. Among the business leaders surveyed, 30% said that "optimizing external processes like marketing and sales" was one of the top three benefits of AI. However, few respondents selected this option as the number one benefit of AI; just 7% said this was the biggest benefit of the technology. This is another area where statistical machine learning and advanced modelling can be helpful, and many enterprise sales and marketing applications have already begun to incorporate machine learning and other AI technologies.
Along with optimizing their sales and marketing processes, organizations also say that those statistical machine learning tools are helping them find brand new markets. A quarter of those surveyed placed this benefit among the top three, and 8% said it was the number one benefit of AI. Often this benefit comes through the use of advanced analytics tools that have machine learning capabilities or through the use of those sales or marketing applications that have machine learning capabilities.
A quarter of those surveyed by Deloitte said that one of the top three benefits of AI was to help them "capture and apply scarce knowledge where needed." And 8% of those surveyed said this was the top benefit of the technology.
Many organizations have vast amounts of unstructured data that sits in archives or on employee hard drives where it is rarely if every accessed. Search and analytics tools with AI capabilities are helping organizations tap into that data and share the information with leaders who can take action based on the insights surfaced by the AI tools.
Of all the potential benefits of AI listed in the survey, the one respondents selected the least often was reducing headcount through greater use of automation. Only 22% of those surveyed said that this was one of the top three benefits of AI technology, and only 7% selected this as the number one benefit of artificial intelligence.
While this is a promising finding for those worried about losing their jobs to AI, the report pointed out that this option could have been the least popular because enterprises haven't been pursuing cost-cutting with their AI initiatives yet or simply because they are still in the early stages of AI adoption. When the survey asked executives how they believed AI would impact the size of the workforce in ten years' time, the answers were mixed: 28% though AI would create a lot of new jobs and 28% thought humans and AI would work together in new ways. But 22% thought AI would displace many workers.
Of all the potential benefits of AI listed in the survey, the one respondents selected the least often was reducing headcount through greater use of automation. Only 22% of those surveyed said that this was one of the top three benefits of AI technology, and only 7% selected this as the number one benefit of artificial intelligence.
While this is a promising finding for those worried about losing their jobs to AI, the report pointed out that this option could have been the least popular because enterprises haven't been pursuing cost-cutting with their AI initiatives yet or simply because they are still in the early stages of AI adoption. When the survey asked executives how they believed AI would impact the size of the workforce in ten years' time, the answers were mixed: 28% though AI would create a lot of new jobs and 28% thought humans and AI would work together in new ways. But 22% thought AI would displace many workers.
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