Artificial Intelligence to dramatically impact businesses: TCS

LONDON: Artificial intelligence, regarded as "essential" to competitiveness, will have a dramatic impact on businesses by 2020, according to a study by India's leading IT services provider Tata Consultancy services. Focused on the current and future impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the seventh Global Trends Study, concluded in June last year, polled 835 leading executives across 13 global industry sectors in four regions of the world, finding that 84 per cent of the companies see the use of AI as "essential" to competitiveness, with a further 50 per cent seeing the technology as "transformative". Exploring the views and actions of decision makers from global companies with average revenues of USD 20 billion, the study revealed AI is spreading across almost all areas of a company. The biggest adopters of AI today are, not surprisingly, IT departments, with two-thirds (67 per cent) of survey respondents using AI to detect security intrusions, user issues and deliver automation. However, by 2020, almost a third (32 per cent) of companies believe AI's greatest impact will be in sales, marketing or customer service, while one in five (20 per cent) see AI's impact being largest in non-customer facing corporate functions, including finance, strategic planning, corporate development, and HR.