Today, innovation-driven businesses are investing significant resources in artificial intelligence (AI) systems to advance their AI maturity journey. According to IDC, worldwide spending on AI-centric systems is expected to surpass $300 billion by 2026, compared to $118 billion in 2022. In the past, AI systems have failed more frequently due to a lack of process maturity. About 60-80% of AI projects used to fail due to poor planning, lack of expertise, inadequate data management, or ethics and fairness issues. But, with every passing year, this number is improving.

Companies who have some success with their initial AI projects are seeking ways to accelerate adoption to deliver more value to the business. One researcher has defined an AI Adoption Maturity Model that presents a roadmap for accelerating AI adoption. The first stage of the six-step AI adoption maturity model is the digitization of work, turning work in the physical world into digital processes that can be tracked and recorded as data, suggests Dr. Michael Wu, chief AI strategist for PROS Holdings, providing AI-based software as a service for pricing optimization, with a focus on the airline industry. "This stage is all about getting the data, which is the raw material for AI," stated Wu, in an account from ZDNet. "If you are on the digital transformation bandwagon, good for you. You are already in Stage 1 of this maturity curve."

From where I'm standing, at the intersection between AI and eCommerce, I can see opportunities for businesses to better serve their customers – and themselves – in ways we never thought possible. The road to them, though, is not a straight line to success. For those willing to patiently make incremental progress, there's an $80 billion reward at the end. Here's where you can find these opportunities for growth. Worldwide eCommerce sales topped $3.5 trillion USD in 2019, an increase of approximately 18% from the year before.

There is much discussion about the impact intelligent technologies will have on the world. While there is no shortage of hype, it is widely agreed that intelligent technologies will shape life and work in ways we still can't imagine. Many businesses are looking to the intelligent future with equal measures of excitement and trepidation. At the crux of the discussion is the term artificial intelligence (AI), which describes the wide field of making machines exhibit human-like intelligence. For many, this term can conjure images of science fiction and a takeover by robots.

Some people seem to regard artificial intelligence (AI) as a secular faith. AI is primarily a software development and engineering discipline. But AI is not a religion and it does not have a holy scripture that sanctifies some approaches while denigrating others. That's why I grow uncomfortable when tech industry conversations turn to "true AI," as in this recent Bernard Marr article. These philosophical musings don't hold much value for AI practitioners who are tuning algorithms to analyze real-time video feeds, recognize faces in a crowd, or guide an autonomous vehicle toward its appointed destination.