Irish businesses need to fully embrace AI according to a new survey from PwC and the Analytics Institute

More investment is needed by Irish businesses to fully leverage the benefits of AI and the government needs to implement a public policy for AI. These are some of the main findings from the PwC/Analytics Institute joint research that benchmarked the readiness of Irish businesses against their US peers including the opportunities and challenges they may face.

76% of those surveyed in Ireland recognised that businesses that fail to apply AI could quickly lose competitive advantage. A similar proportion 77% are of the view that AI will significantly change the way they will do business in the next five years.

The survey also suggested that Irish business leaders, whilst seeing the opportunities of AI, need to invest more in AI. Nearly half (46%) admit that they do not understand the impact that AI will have on their businesses in the next five years. Four out of ten (39%) confirmed that they have no plans to roll out AI initiatives in the year ahead while the vast majority of their US counterparts are much more advanced having either rolled out AI or are in the process of doing so.

According to the survey the greatest expected benefits from AI Investments include:

Automating routine tasks (37%)

Creating better customer experiences (25%)

Improved decision making (23%)

Achieving cost savings (22%)

Gathering forward looking intelligence (16%)

Lorcan Malone, Chief Executive, Analytics Institute, said: “AI and analytics, if successfully deployed, can extract valuable insights for better business decision making and robust data is a key enabler. But in our experience, organisations have some way to go to provide the robust, reliable and complete data that is needed. Monitoring data standards, as well as developing systems and processes that make it easier for employees to create usable, labelled data sets for future use is also important.”

With rising concerns around trust and cyber threats, over three-quarters (76%) of survey respondents are calling on the Irish Government to have a public policy for AI. Furthermore, an overwhelming majority (87%) are of the view that it is important that Ireland puts itself at the forefront of the AI revolution, investing in the skills and technology needed to successfully adopt AI into commercial business opportunities.

Lorcan Malone  added: “Responsible AI means explainable AI, so that the algorithms’ decisions are transparent. Boards may be asked about risk management and the reliability of their brand when machines are making the decisions. To make AI more trustworthy, and more acceptable, it needs to be easy to explain. We recommend developing your AI with trust and transparency in mind, and an expectation that it will be regulated in the future.”

 “And while AI policy is still in its infancy, many policy makers are calling for comprehensive guidelines that address ethical algorithms. We see national AI strategies emerging with a large majority of Irish respondents calling on the Irish Government to create a public policy on AI.”

AI offers opportunities for greater product innovation and tailoring of products for individuals. But few Irish respondents score product innovation (3%) as an expected investment return from AI, while US counterparts see a much great opportunity (US: 14%).

The full benefits of AI only come to life when AI is integrated with other emerging technologies such as analytics and the Internet of Things. The survey highlights that Ireland has some way to go on such integration. For example, very few (5%) Irish respondents admitted that managing the convergence of AI with other technologies is a challenge when rolling out AI initiatives (US:12%).

The analysis identifies six key AI priorities that Irish organisations cannot ignore:

1. Clarity: Understand AI and how it fits your business
Ensure you and your people understand AI and its benefits. It can support your business strategy, reduce costs, improve products and services and drive efficiencies at every level.

2. Strategy: Get the AI strategy right; Organise return on investment
Bring together AI, IT and core operation leaders in a structured way to manage priorities, data, strategy, and resources and organise the business to measure the return on investment.

3. Data: Locate and label to teach machines
Identify the data sets you need to train AI to solve specific business problems, then prioritise capturing and labelling that data in line with enterprise-wide standards.

4. Skills: Build an AI-ready workforce with an agile mindset
Recruiting and upskilling are just two pieces of the puzzle. You also need to systematically identify how AI is changing job roles and skills; evolve upskilling, performance and compensation frameworks and develop new collaborative processes.

5. Trust: Make AI responsible in all its dimensions
Trustworthy AI requires fairness, interpretability, robustness and security, governance and system ethics. Create roles and establish metrics so all teams are working to build responsible AI.

6. Convergence: Combine AI with analytics, the IoT and more
Many technologies can benefit from AI, but advanced analytics and the Internet of Things will bring sizeable benefits.