The expectations relating to artificial intelligence are very high but companies are still in their infancy in applying these systems to their processes or to the services offered. This is what emerges from a report by The Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review, entitled "Reshaping business with artificial intelligence". Of the 3 managers and analysts from 21 different industries surveyed in 112 countries, more than three-quarters expect artificial intelligence (AI) to allow their company to create new lines of business, or in any case (nearly 85%) to gain or maintain a competitive advantage. In fact, 80% of managers see AI as an opportunity, while only 40% think it could also be a risk. Just 13% of respondents see it neither as a risk nor as an opportunity.
However, only one in 20 organizations have developed processes or offerings extensively and just one in five to a limited extent. Furthermore, less than 40% of companies have an AI-related strategy and among the large companies themselves, those with more than 100 employees, only half have one. The research shows that the distance between those who are investing in AI and those who are not is widening: among the organizations interviewed there are 19% pioneers, i.e. companies that have both adopted some form of AI and understood what the steps are necessary to implement it; at the opposite extreme are the "passive" (36%), who have neither solutions nor understanding of the phenomenon.
Yet the revolution will come soon. As many as six out of ten managers expect the impacts on their organizations to be large within five years, particularly on information technology, operations & manufacturing, supply chain management and customer relationship activities. It is necessary to equip oneself on various fronts: understanding how to adequately exploit the business potential; how to organize the workforce by integrating people and automated systems; how to respect the regulatory contexts on aspects such as the protection of privacy. And, from a technical point of view, how to prepare an effective data structure, which allows the algorithms to be "trained", that is, to learn from previous experiences. You also need to have integrated databases, rather than funneling them into separate silos.
Concerns about job losses due to AI, on the other hand, have diminished. Despite widespread alarms in the public debate, less than half of respondents (47%) expect their companies' workforces to shrink in the next 5 years. Nearly 80% believe current employee skills will be increased. Fewer than a third of managers fear AI will take away some of the functions they currently perform.
