Analyst outfit Gartner group has been consulting its Tarot cards and concluded that artificial intelligence would be worth $1.2 trillion to enterprises in 2018.
Gartner research director John-David Lovelock said that the value provided by AI to businesses this year would increase 70 percent on last year’s figure and will continue to grow over the next four years.
He said that AI promises to be the most disruptive class of technologies during the decade, adding that end users will be looking to spend money on AI to address specific issues.
“One of the biggest aggregate sources for AI-enhanced products and services acquired by enterprises between 2017 and 2022 will be niche solutions that address one need very well”, he added.
“Business executives will drive investment in these products, sourced from thousands of narrowly focused, specialist suppliers with specific AI-enhanced applications.”
Gartner said that three main factors will drive an increase in business growth derived from AI.
Organisations will see an increase in revenue from existing products and services as a result of utilising AI, Gartner said, and will also uncover new opportunities after implementing an AI strategy. The costs of delivering solutions will also decrease as a result of using AI, the analyst said.
Gartner predicts that the most significant driver of business value, however, will come from an improvement in customers’ experiences – with businesses utilising AI capabilities to improve client interaction and retention.
It picked out “virtual agents” – which can handle basic customer queries for an organisation – as an example of these improvements. In 2018 it expects virtual agents to account for 46 percent of the overall business value provided by AI.
Smart products contain the most common type of AI in the market, usually in the form of cloud systems that integrate data about the user’s preferences from multiple interactions. This allows for a customised experience for the user. Smart products account for 18 percent of global AI-derived business value in 2018, but it is predicted that this will fall to 14 percent by 2022.
It is not all great though. AI value growth will, however, slow after 2018, the analyst said, with the AI value seen by businesses expected to be $1.9tn in 2019 and $2.6tn in 2020.
