What You Need to Know About the Sixth Annual Industry Report
We introduced the State of AI and Machine Learning Report over six years ago when AI and machine learning adoption was still in its infancy. Since then, the industry has grown significantly, with budgets, executive visibility, and ownership all increasing year-over-year.Despite rapid growth, there is more room for organizations to adopt, scale, and evolve their AI programs. In 2020, global organizations and well-funded startups are leading the way by integrating AI as a core component of their business. Other organizations are still testing the waters or working to scale their initial programs, as they see early results. This is the second year where we have explored the gap between line of business decision-makers (which we refer to throughout the report as business leaders) and technical practitioners (which we refer to as technologists). As AI adoption matures, both types of leaders need to be mindful of these differences and work together to better manage change. New to the report this year, we have also measured the state of AI for enterprise (1,000+ full-time employees) and commercial (fewer than 1,000 full-time employees) organizations.As organizations begin to scale their deployments, we see AI moving up in the organization, with the C-suite embracing and taking ownership of AI. This shift and the growth that fuels it puts more focus on areas like ethics and bias, scalability, and the criticality of AI to the business as key parts of building a successful AI journey.
What is the 2020 State of AI and Machine Learning Report?
The State of AI 2020 report is the output of a cross-industry, mid and large-organization study of senior business leaders and technologists. The report examines and identifies the main characteristics of the expanding AI and machine learning landscape by gathering responses from AI decision-makers.Respondents were a mix of random sampling made up of a panel provider and our prospect, customer, and partner databases. The random sample consisted of directors, VPs and above of product management, engineering, IT, data, data science at companies with 500+ employees. The results reflect the real population within a margin of error of ~5%.The methodology we used ensured that at least 30% of responses came from organizations under 1,000 employees, whereas 70% represent 1,000+ organizations, 18% being greater than 25,000 full-time employee companies.
The Current State of AI and ML
The results paint an exciting picture for organizations working on AI initiatives across all levels of adoption. There has never been more focus, budget, people, algorithms, hardware, and other resources available for AI initiatives at any point in history. This is not to say that the road ahead is easy. This report sheds light on common challenges and opportunities that organizations need to be prepared to address. We aim to illustrate the current state of AI and machine learning, detailing how organizations are implementing AI within their business. For readers who might be amid their own AI initiatives, understanding the dial turns for AI success will be invaluable.Lastly, given the current world context, we looked at how the adoption of AI is impacted in the wake of COVID-19, as organizations are forced to rethink the way they operate in a world that needs to adjust to a new normal.While a lot of organizations reported acceleration of their AI adoption, there are still challenges to rapidly adopting AI, and the biggest one is data. This stems from the requirement for high-quality training data being a key component in successful, unbiased AI deployments that work for everyone. With organizations using more data types as well as requiring more data for model refresh, organizations must be prepared to tackle and manage their data pipeline effectively and efficiently.
Who Will Benefit From The State of AI Report?
Each year thousands of companies turn to the State of AI to help guide them in their own AI journey. Leaders look to the report to gain a better understanding of the current landscape and appetite for AI initiatives among business leaders and technologists to help inform their own strategies.We’re also happy to see media publications leveraging the report to help discuss and understand emerging trends. The report has been featured in publications such as:
You can download the State of AI and Machine Learning Report here.