According to recent research commissioned by IBM (NYSE: IBM), 59% of Indian enterprises with 1,000 or more employees reported using AI actively in their operations. According to the “IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023,” early adopters are setting the standard. Of Indian firms already using AI, 74% have increased their investments in the last 24 months in areas like workforce reskilling and research and development.
The hiring of workers with the necessary skill sets and ethical considerations are two ongoing obstacles that prevent firms from integrating AI technologies into their operations. As a result, removing these obstacles in 2024 would be a top concern. Examples of these include creating a strong AI governance structure and equipping individuals with the necessary abilities to work with AI.
The fact that Indian businesses are investing more in and embracing AI is a positive sign that they are already reaping the rewards of the technology. Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia, stated that despite many firms’ reluctance to go beyond trial and implement AI at scale, there is still a big chance to accelerate. In order to fully realize its potential in the upcoming months, organizations will need to rely on data and AI governance technologies to responsibly design AI models they can reliably embrace. Artificial intelligence (AI) can expose businesses to data privacy concerns, legal difficulties, and ethical questions if governance mechanisms aren’t used. We’ve already seen these incidents affect numerous businesses worldwide, the speaker continued.
Highlights from Morning Consult’s “IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023” for India, sponsored by IBM:
The use of AI in major organizations surveyed has not changed over the past few years:
Currently, 27% of IT experts working for large companies say they are actively investigating the use of AI, while 59% of them say they have actively implemented the technology.
Similar to this, almost 6 out of 10 IT experts working for large companies say their organization is actively deploying generative AI, while an additional 34% are just investigating it.
In the last 24 months, 74% of IT professionals at businesses using or investigating AI said that their organization has increased its investments in or implementation of AI in areas including R&D (67%), reskilling/workforce development (55%) and developing proprietary AI solutions (53%).
The need to cut costs and automate procedures, along with the ease of use of AI tools, is what is driving the adoption of AI among the studied companies:
The primary drivers of AI adoption include the development of more accessible AI tools (59%), the desire to automate critical activities and cut costs (48%), and the growing quantity of AI integrated into commercial software that is readily available (47%).
The largest obstacle to India’s adoption of AI continues to be the skills gap:
The following are the top 5 obstacles preventing successful AI adoption at enterprises, whether they are exploring or implementing AI: insufficient AI skills and expertise (30%), lack of platforms/tools for developing AI models (28%), complexity or difficulty integrating and scaling AI projects (27%), ethical concerns (26%), and excessive data complexity (25%).
Although the need for regulated and trustworthy AI is widely acknowledged, the following obstacles are making it challenging for the Indian organizations surveyed to implement:
The majority of IT professionals (among companies exploring or deploying AI) agree that consumers are more likely to choose services from companies with transparent and ethical AI practices (98% strongly or somewhat agree), and 94% say it is important for their business to be able to explain how their AI arrived at a decision.
Even so, just a small percentage are undertaking the crucial moves toward trustworthy AI, such as lowering bias (36%), monitoring data provenance (46%), ensuring they can defend the choices made by their AI models (52%), or creating moral AI policies (46%).
Lack of an AI strategy (57%), organizational guidelines (55%) and tools for AI governance and management that are compatible with all data environments (55%) are the main obstacles to creating reliable and moral AI.
AI is already affecting the workforce in Indian firms that were surveyed:
Businesses who mention AI’s application to labor or skill shortages are doing it in a variety of ways, such as by automating customer self-service responses and actions (63%) reducing manual or repetitive processes using automation tools, or enhancing recruiting and human resources (56%).
Currently, 46% of employers are retraining or reskilling staff members to use new automation and AI tools together. 51% of respondents stated that using new AI and automation tools at work excites them.
See the worldwide report by clicking this link.
Methodology: A representative sample of 8,584 IT professionals from Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, UAE, UK, US, and LATAM (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) participated in this survey, which was performed in November 2023. Participants must be full-time employees, work for organizations with more than one employee, hold a managerial or higher position, and have at least a basic understanding of how IT functions and is used by their business in order to be eligible for the survey. There is a +/- 1 percentage point margin of error for the overall results.
