Deloitte Survey: “Almost nine-in-ten UK businesses set to invest in AI by 2020”
No less than 85% of senior executives are making detailed plans to invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) by 2020. That’s according to a new survey of UK digital leaders conducted by Deloitte.
The findings come from the first edition of a new regular report from Deloitte called the Digital Disruption Index (DDI). The DDI will track investment in digital technologies and create a detailed picture of their impact on the largest and most influential businesses and public sector bodies. The first edition includes responses from 51 organisations with a combined market value of £229 billion.
Over half of survey respondents expect that, by 2020, they will invest more than £10 million in digital technologies and ways of working such as AI, the cloud, robotics, blockchain, analytics, the IoT and virtual and augmented reality. 73% say they will invest in robotics, 63% in augmented and virtual reality, 62% in ‘wearables’, 54% in biometrics (eg voice and fingerprint recognition) and 43% in blockchain. The full listing includes cyber security and drones.
This year alone, 30% of UK organisations will invest upwards of £10 million in these technologies. When compared with corporate IT budgets, though, this figure does represent a rather modest amount of fiscal support.
According to separate Deloitte research, the majority of IT functions harbour budgets of over £20 million, while a quarter of corporate IT functions spend more than £75 million annually.
As a likely consequence, at this stage only 9% of executives believe that UK companies are “world-leading” when it comes to exploring and implementing digital technologies and ways of working.