Our survey results suggest that:
- A majority of the participants (60%) are of the opinion that AI would help furthering social causes and enable human beings to live more fulfilling lives. These include stimulating economic growth, enhancing global health and well-being, improving cyber security and improving efficiencies in imparting education.
- People expect their interactions with digital assistants to expand from being convenience-driven to the point of handling major responsibilities such as that of a teacher or advisor.
- Business decision makers deem AI powered solutions such as machine learning, virtual private assistants, decision support systems, automated data analysts and others to be have a high impact on their businesses in the future.
- The majority (75%) of business decision makers would prefer either purely AI advisors or a combination of AI and human advisors to make their promotion decisions.
- When it comes to matters of personal health check-ups (77%) and education (61%), the participants are still inclined towards the involvement of human experts. Similar sentiments are echoed regarding the potential loss of human touch associated with AI run customer service.
Bringing convenience and saving time across different walks of life
61% of the survey respondents use digital assistants in different scenarios such as at home, at work and while commuting to help them save time, receive reminders and get things done.
Reducing mundane, non-value adding tasks at the workplace
Over 70% of respondents indicated that each of the activities such as writing & responding to mails, entering timesheet hours, scheduling and updating calendars and repetitive paperwork can be readily out-sourced to AI assistants.
Providing access to smarter customer service
49% of all the participants are ready to pay/already paying extra for either an AI-run customer service or its intelligent combination with human touch.
Allowing for better 1-1 personalisation in interactions
72% of business decision makers believe that AI can provide better 1-1 personalisation (e.g., recommender applications or websites)
Which AI powered solutions are expected to be most impactful for businesses?
- IT/ITeS
- Technology
- Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)
- Manufacturing
- Education and teaching
IT/ITeS
In the IT/ITES industry, machine learning is the most popular AI-powered solution (63% of the participants). This also reinforces the understanding that IT/ITES may potentially be the most disrupted sector by machine learning solutions, indicating that the sector may replace repetitive manual jobs.
Technology
The technology sector showed a relatively balanced focus on multiple AI-powered solutions. As this sector is at the forefront of AI research and commercial deployments, it is likely to cater to multiple client industries with a range of AI-powered solutions.
Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)
The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry considers robotics, along with machine learning and automated data analysts (44% of the participants for each), to have the highest impact on their business with use cases ranging from automation of processes, customer support, regulatory processes to other back office operations.
Manufacturing
In the manufacturing sector, decision makers/influencers seem to lean towards a mix of machine learning solutions (50% of the participants), decision support systems, automated communications and automated research and information aggregation (40% of the participants each) in terms of how they perceive the above solutions to impact their business over the next few years. AI solutions, combined with other enabling fields such as industrial Internet of things (IIoT) devices and platforms, are expected to play a significant role in paving the way for smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0
Education and teaching
In the field of education and teaching, machine learning solutions (100% of the participants) and automated research and aggregation solutions (57% of the participants) seem to be the perceived high-impact applications of AI-powered solutions. This seems to be a potential opportunity for identifying use cases where machine learning and other AI-powered solutions can deliver the appropriate training and education to a vast majority of the populace.
