Global business value derived from artificial intelligence (AI) will hit $1.2 trillion (£859.4bn) this year, according to the latest forecast from analyst house Gartner.
The total use cases come under three categories, Gartner puts it: customer experience, new revenue, and cost reduction. By 2022, Gartner predicts this overall number will threaten $4 trillion – but what’s more interesting is the growth percentage. 2018 will see 70% growth, from $692bn to $1.2tn, with 2019 seeing an additional 62% growth to $1.9tn.
The analyst firm puts this down to a shift from organisations seeing value in using AI techniques in the coming two years, to uncovering business value and new revenue opportunities from 2021 onwards.
Today, cost reduction is one of the primary factors as companies look for AI to automate more tasks and improve decision making. As this publication has previously noted, fears abound over how automation may lead to employees’ jobs being removed. Gartner’s view, which comes in line with that of many technologists, is that virtual agents, for instance, will take over simple requests and tasks from call centres and leave the more complex issues to human workers.
“AI promises to be the most disruptive class of technologies during the next 10 years due to advances in computational power, volume, velocity and variety of data, as well as advances in deep neural networks,” said John-David Lovelock, Gartner research vice president in a statement.
“One of the biggest aggregate sources for AI-enhanced products and services acquired by enterprises between 2017 and 2022 will be niche solutions that address one need very well,” Lovelock added. “Business executives will drive investment in these products, sourced from thousands of narrowly focused, specialist suppliers with specific AI-enhanced applications.”
You can read the full analysis in the Gartner report (client access), The Business Value of Artificial Intelligence, Worldwide, 2017-2025.
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