But only 10% are achieving significant financial benefits with artificial intelligence

Today, most organizations have a strategy for AI in place, suggests the fourth annual AI study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group.

But while 70% of business leaders say they understand how AI will change how their organization generates business value, only 10% report significant financial benefits in 2020.

In 2019, 53% of business leaders said they understood how AI will change how their organization generates business value.

Gotta have faith

The study comprised a global survey of more than 3,000 managers in 112 countries and interviews with executives and academics leading AI initiatives in large organizations.

According to the study, 59% of organizations have a strategy for AI and 57% are piloting or already have deployed AI solutions.

Competition is helping drive the integration of AI with business strategy: 87% of organizations expect that AI will allow them to gain a competitive advantage, while 78% believe AI will allow them to move into new business areas; 72% say the pressure to reduce costs will require them to use AI.

“Organizations that extensively change business processes when integrating AI solutions are five times as likely to realize significant financial benefits,” the report noted.

While 4% of organizations that make no changes or small changes to business processes are likely to realize significant financial benefits, 20% of those that make extensive changes to many business processes are likely to realize significant benefits.

That study found that when organizations add the ability to learn with AI, the odds of significant financial benefits increase to 73%.

Such learning organizations were found to have three characteristics, according to the authors of the study: “They facilitate systematic and continuous learning between humans and machines; They develop multiple ways for humans and machines to interact; They change to learn, and learn to change.”

An earlier study by Omdia found that despite the pandemic, 71% of businesses said they were confident that their AI initiatives will deliver positive results in the next 12 to 24 months.