A new Gartner report has found that despite talent shortages, companies are continuing to adopt AI. In fact, the number of enterprises employing AI has grown 270% over the past four years alone.
AI deployment tripled over the past year
For the 2019 CIO Survey, Gartner interviewed over 3,000 CIOs in order to measure their engagement with AI. Overall, the respondents spanned across 89 countries and represented $15 trillion in revenue and public-sector budgets and $284 billion in IT spending. Four years ago, AI implementation was so rare that just 10% of respondents said their enterprises had deployed AI.
However, the amount of companies deploying AI has now tripled from 25% in 2018 to 37% today. Chris Howard, research VP at Gartner, commented on the importance of AI in today's corporate environment. He warned that "if you are a CIO and your organisation doesn't use AI," it is likely that "your competitors do" which should be a concern.
The deployment of AI has increased dramatically as a result of the significant maturation of AI capabilities. As a result, more enterprises than ever are willing to incorporate the technology into their operations. “We still remain far from general AI that can wholly take over complex tasks, but we have now entered the realm of AI-augmented work and decision science — what we call ‘augmented intelligence,'” Howard added. However, the more enterprises adopt AI, the larger the skills gap becomes.
AI's talent shortage continues
As Gartner suggests, AI has become an "integral part of every digital strategy" and the enterprise on the whole. At present, 52% of telco organisations use chatbots and 38% of healthcare providers rely on computer-assisted diagnostics. Despite its evident value, many organisations are struggling to deploy AI due to a distinct lack of available talent. According to a Gartner Research Circle survey, 54% of organisations are currently suffering from a skills shortage.
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