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15 Unexpected Stats About Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has the potential to change business forever.

Its promise? To take care of all the mundane tasks employees currently handle, freeing their time to be more creative and perform the work that machines cannot. Today, the emerging technology is used mostly by large enterprises through machine learning and predictive analytics.

Here’s a look at the current state of AI and what lies ahead.

1. Artificial intelligence has come into the mainstream because it allows us to make sense of an increasingly large amount of data in real time. Indeed, worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes by 2025. (Source: IDC)

2. Thirty-seven percent of organizations have implemented AI in some form. That’s a 270% increase over the last four years. (Source: Gartner)

3. By 2021, 80% of emerging technologies will have AI foundations. (Source: Gartner)

4. Worldwide spending on artificial intelligence systems is forecast to reach $35.8 billion in 2019, an increase of 44% over the amount spent in 2018. (Source: IDC)

5. Marketing and sales prioritize AI and machine learning higher than any other department in enterprises today (40%). (Source: Forbes)

6. The AI use cases that will see the most investment this year are automated customer service agents ($4.5 billion worldwide), sales process recommendation and automation ($2.7 billion), and automated threat intelligence and prevention systems ($2.7 billion). (Source: IDC)

7. AI embedded in analytics and other marketing software will free up more than a third of data analysts in marketing organizations by 2022, enabling them to focus their time on business priorities instead of spending time on manual processes like personalization, lead scoring, anomaly detection, marketing performance management, and reporting. (Source: Gartner)

8.. Demand for AI talent has doubled in the last two years. And talent, which is increasing, remains in short supply with two roles available for every AI professional today. Technology and financial service companies are currently absorbing 60% of AI talent. (Source: MMC Ventures)

9. For those enterprises already in the AI fray, top-performing companies said they are more than twice as likely as their peers to be using the technology for marketing (28% vs. 12%). Unsurprisingly, analysis of data is a key AI focus for businesses, with on-site personalization the second most commonly cited use case for AI. (Source: Adobe)

10. Sixty-three percent of people prefer to message a chat bot vs. talk with a human when communicating with a business. (Source: G2 Crowd)

11. Forty-four percent of executives believe artificial intelligence’s most important benefit is providing data that can be used to make decisions. (Source: Chatbots Magazine)

12. Thirty-six percent on consumers own a smart speaker today, and 54% of owners say their speakers are accurate in their understanding of the spoken word. The rise in ownership is mainly due to some major strides that have been made in natural language processing, a component of AI in which a computer program can understand human language as it is spoken. (Source: Adobe)

13. AI-powered recommender algorithms (e.g., Amazon’s “Customers who bought this item also bought” and Netflix’s recommended programming) is something consumers are becoming quite accustomed to. And it’s good for business, too. The AI recommendation system that Netflix uses, for example,  saves the company about $1 billion each year. Additionally 75% of what users watch on Netflix come from those recommendations. (Source: Netflix)

14. The wearable artificial intelligence market will reach $180 billion by 2025. (Source: Global Market Insights)

15. Facial recognition, also powered by AI, is forecasted to increase its annual revenue growth rate by over 20% in 2020. The expected growth is due to the improvement in accuracy in facial recognition technology. (Source: VisionGain)