Artificial intelligence is here, but businesses have barely scratched the surface of the impact it can have. Instead of supercharging their growth, some companies are finding themselves stuck with proof-of-concept experiments that end up going nowhere. Leaders need to create the right company culture to inspire, build and empower a workforce fit for the AI age. While the'how' remains a challenge, the emerging problems are actually the'why' and the'who'. Leaders see attracting the right talent and competing investment priorities as the two top barriers to AI adoption.

Artificial intelligence is here, but businesses have barely scratched the surface of the impact it can have. Instead of supercharging their growth, some companies are finding themselves stuck with proof-of-concept experiments that end up going nowhere. Leaders need to create the right company culture to inspire, build and empower a workforce fit for the AI age. While the'how' remains a challenge, the emerging problems are actually the'why' and the'who'. Leaders see attracting the right talent and competing investment priorities as the two top barriers to AI adoption.

These and many other fascinating insights are from the recent TDWI Best Practices Report, BI and Analytics in the Age of AI and Big Data. An executive summary of the study is available online here. The entire study is available for download here (39 PP., PDF, free, opt-in). The study found that enterprises are placing a high priority on augmenting existing systems and replacing older technologies and data platforms with new cloud-based BI and predictive analytics ones. Transforming Data with Intelligence (TDWI) is a global community of AI, analytics, data science and machine learning professionals interested in staying current in these and more technology areas as part of their professional development.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword, pushing established software vendors to introduce it into their product strategy, "creating considerable confusion in the process", according to IT researcher Gartner Inc. Gartner Inc, on Tuesday, predicted that by 2020, AI technologies will be virtually pervasive in almost every new software product and service and will be one of the top five investment priorities for more than 30% of CIOs, globally. Gartner defined AI as systems that change behaviors without being explicitly programmed, based on data collected, usage analysis and other observations. The researcher said that in May 2017, the term artificial intelligence was the seventh most popular term on gartner.com, The term did not feature in top 100 search terms back in January 2016. "AI offers exciting possibilities, but unfortunately, most vendors are focused on the goal of simply building and marketing an AI-based product rather than first identifying needs, potential uses and the business value to customers," said Jim Hare, research vice president at Gartner.