Global AI business value to reach $3.9 trillion in 2022: Gartner

Gartner released its forecasts for business value derived from artificial intelligence (AI) from 2017 to 2025 on Wednesday. The research and advisory firm estimated the global value to reach $1.2 trillion in 2018 and $3.9 trillion in 2022. "AI promises to be the most disruptive class of technologies during the next 10 years due to advances in computational power, volume, velocity and variety of data, as well as advances in deep neural networks (DNNs)," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "One of the biggest aggregate sources for AI-enhanced products and services acquired by enterprises between 2017 and 2022 will be niche solutions that address one need very well. Business executives will drive investment in these products, sourced from thousands of narrowly focused, specialist suppliers with specific AI-enhanced applications." Lovelock went on to explain that customer experience will be the primary role of AI in the next few years, particularly in improving customer interaction and achieving cost reductions through efficiency. After 2021, AI's role will switch to new revenue generation through an increase in sales of existing services and in the creation of new in-demand products.

Meanwhile, the report stated that virtual agents will account for 46% of the global AI-derived business value in 2018 and 26% by 2022, decision automation 2% in 2018 and 16% by 2022, and smart products 18% in 2018 and 14% by 2022. The report is entitled "Forecast: The Business Value of Artificial Intelligence, Worldwide, 2017-2025."