Business loyalty to artificial intelligence technologies is growing. This is driven by the increasing availability of solutions, accumulated experience of projects and real effects of implementation.
The penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in business processes is growing worldwide. According to international company McKinsey, in 2021, 56% of global respondent companies used AI in at least one area of business, a figure that has increased by 6% since 2020. AI is predominantly used to optimize service operations (27% of companies), improve products (22%) and automate contact centers (22%).
The automotive, retail and FMCG sectors have the highest AI maturity – the degree to which they are using technology capabilities for high performance, according to international Accenture. According to the company, AI maturity reached 12% last year among the world’s largest companies, with an average of 30% of revenue generated by AI. In all, nearly 75% of the world’s major companies have integrated AI into their business strategies, according to Accenture. Forty-two percent of its respondents said the return on AI initiatives exceeded expectations.
In Russia, according to the National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE), almost one in three large businesses used AI in 2021 – primarily speech technologies (voice assistants, chatbots and other applications that work to automate the process of communication with the customer).
“Another powerful area is predictive analytics that aggregates large volumes of data,” notes Igor Pivovarov, chief analyst at the MIPT Research Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence Systems.
In some areas in large and medium-sized companies, AI is already integrated into 20% of the processes and can increase their efficiency six to seven times, said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko at the business breakfast “How to unite the business for mass implementation of AI in the industries” at the Artificial Intelligence Journey (AIJ) international conference. At the meeting, industry representatives discussed successful examples of implementing AI solutions in business.
In construction, AI helps to reduce downtime by five times, to reduce time by 48% and to reduce costs by 10-12%, said at the AIJ business breakfast Anton Elistratov, General Director of the development group of companies “Samolet”. “Gazpromneft is producing oil found by AI, says Oleg Tretiak, the company’s acting director of digital transformation. According to him, the company plans to double its investments in these technologies.
Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of the board and head of Sberbank’s Corporate and Investment Business Block, presented at AIJ a service developed for the bank’s clients called Demand Forecasting in Manufacturing and Retail. “The accuracy of demand forecasting on the basis of AI models with details by region, time and other parameters reaches almost 100% and allows to increase profitability in trade and production,” said Anatoly Popov.
Barriers and opportunities
Artificial intelligence is becoming more accessible and efficient, say the authors of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI Index 2022 report: since 2018, the cost of learning to classify images has dropped by 63.6%, and training time has fallen by 94%. Thanks to the democratization of technology, they are becoming more common in various industries – fintech, medicine, logistics, retail, industry, and marketing.
The main trend this year is customization or very simple application of industrial AI, available even to small companies, confirms Sberbank. At the bank itself, the financial impact of AI in 2021 was 205 billion rubles, the goal for this year is 230-250 billion rubles, said First Deputy Chairman of Sberbank Alexander Vedyakhin. More than 85% of client ways already contain artificial intelligence technologies, “smart” algorithms cover more than 65% of bank processes.
The services sector is the leader in implementing AI, says Konstantin Vishnevsky, director of the Institute of Statistical Studies and Knowledge Economy: the most intensive use of the technology is in the financial sector (13%) and trade (14.4%), while in the real economy (manufacturing, transport, etc.) the use of AI solutions is gradually increasing, but on average does not exceed 5%.
According to Sber forecasts, the greatest effect on gross added value by 2025 will bring the implementation of AI solutions in Russian construction (+2.1%), agriculture (+1.6%), manufacturing (+1.3%) and healthcare (+1%).
Unlike the financial, telecom and retail industries, capital-intensive industries with many complex physical assets (metallurgy, construction) implement AI technologies more slowly and the barriers are higher there, explains Alexey Masyutin, Head of the HSE AI Center.
AI projects can still be afforded mainly by major players due to high complexity of solutions, lack of dedicated staff and necessary datasets, the need to adapt AI solutions for specific tasks and radical restructuring of most business processes, commented Konstantin Vishnevsky.
One of the barriers is the cost of development and lack of ready, low-cost and convenient services that could be used “out of the box,” says Igor Pivovarov.
Growth points
Igor Pivovarov notes that in order to speed up the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies, it is impossible without investments from the state or provision of ready and available services by major players: “Support will be needed for small businesses that want to introduce AI technologies in their work, for example, by grants or tax reductions.
“If a company buys a boxed product based on AI, its implementation will require an already built IT infrastructure and data culture, and if a custom development is planned – the formation of internal competence of data researchers and ML-engineers,” adds Alexey Masyutin.
It is necessary to differentiate the processes of training of AI specialists – for example, to prepare the required number of AI engineers and AI scientists in a small number of universities – flagships in the development of breakthrough fundamental and applied AI solutions, says the head of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence “Skoltech” Evgeny Burnaev. At the same time it is necessary to stimulate the introduction of technologies based on AI in the real sector of the economy with scientifically and expertly proven effect from the expected implementation and its further replication.
The creation of an information resource platform that would combine both demand and supply for various solutions and developments based on AI could stimulate greater dynamics of projects using artificial intelligence in Russia, believes Alexey Masyutin: “We need our own analogue of profi.ru – profi AI.