The research that polled 1,600 senior business decision makers at large organizations across seven markets, revealed:
A clear link between an organization’s revenue growth and its AI maturity: Organizations who report faster growth in revenue over the past three years were also more likely to be further ahead when it comes to AI maturity. AI is perceived as a long-term strategic priority for innovation, with 76 percent of the respondents citing AI as fundamental to the success of their organization’s strategy, and 64% believing that their organization’s future growth is dependent on large-scale AI adoption.
While there are ethical and job related concerns – 62% believe that stringent ethical standards are needed to ensure the success of AI - most respondents seem optimistic about redeploying displaced employees with higher value work.
The majority, 84%, plans to train employees about the benefits and use of AI, and 80 percent plan to retrain or redeploy impacted employees.
A year ago, Infosys released its research “Amplifying Human Potential: Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. The aim of that study was to better understand the concerns and point of view of the younger workforce and those about to join it. This year, our follow-up research “Amplifying Human Potential: Towards Purposeful Artificial Intelligence” revisited the same skills and education questions, as part of a comprehensive study of business attitudes towards AI across seven major developed and growing economies.
Like each technological disruption before it, the disruption caused by AI will also move at a speed and engage on a scale previously unknown in human history. And like we have done a multitude of times previously, humans must also evolve our faculties and tools, and move alongside it. We must achieve a kind of symbiosis between minds and machines, with machines amplifying and actualizing thoughts and ideas from the human brain, and freeing it from mundane and repetitive cognitive tasks.
Artificial intelligence and automation technologies are already starting to affect our work and daily lives. Changing how we view education is essential to humanity’s ability to achieve the best from new technologies. The time has come to rethink education and to recast it as a life-long process. That means we need to move away from rewarding memorization and instead prize curiosity and experimentation — the building blocks of discovering and understanding the things we do not yet know.