A new report suggests that only one in two UK organisations has deployed a single AI project in the past five years.
The research, conducted by technology consultancy 6point6 in partnership with YouGov, surveyed over 1,000 senior decision makers, from owners to chairpersons and nonexecutive directors, working across industries including financial services and public sector.
If this current rate of adoption continues, said 6point6, the UK economy is at risk of missing out on £315bn by 2035.
The billion-pound figure was calculated by applying existing report data to create an estimate.
The report suggests that 32 per cent of senior executives across UK enterprises have no plans to deploy any artificial intelligence programs in the next two to five years.
Executives in the public sector were found to be the least prepared when it comes to AI adoption.
Seventy per cent said they have no strategy for deploying AI across their organisations while 56 per cent of their counterparts in the financial services don’t have an integrated strategy to do so, the report said.
Gary Richardson, MD of Emerging Technology at 6point6 commented, “The report has confirmed what we in the industry have suspected for a long time now; while there’s a lot of hype around the use of AI in the enterprise, there’s very little in the way of scaled adoption of the technologies in the UK.
“This has to change if we are to reap the benefits of AI – namely providing outstanding customer experiences and increasingly optimised business services. Yet business leaders still remain reluctant to invest the necessary time and money in both skills and subsequent deployments.
“Unless the rate of AI adoption improves, we risk falling behind on the international stage in terms of the financial dividend it promises from taking advantage of these technology advances. This is something we simply cannot afford to let happen.”