A survey of leading CEOs found that nearly three-quarters expect artificial intelligence to transform business in the next five years.
The majority (61%) of UK business chiefs also expect to increase their workforce in the year ahead. This is up from 54% last year and compares with 53% of CEOs globally, according to PwC’s annual CEO survey, published at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Despite uncertainties surrounding Brexit, British CEOs are also optimistic about their organisation’s growth over the next 12 months, with 82% confident about their revenue prospects – this mirrored global responses.
Almost three-quarters of UK CEOs believe that artificial intelligence will significantly change the way they conduct business in the next five years.
Though only 2% of British CEOs have introduced AI initiatives so far and 36% have no plans to pursue any AI strategies in the next three years.
AI… in
Manufacturing?
The benefits of adopting a digitalised operation are numerous for manufacturers, as Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies like IoT, VR and robotics become the focal point of manufacturing today.
AI could drive better data collection and analytics, connect entire factory operations across regions, and allow processes to work autonomously and even self-correct.
Farming?
AI and automation could boost farming by monitoring crops on a plant-by-plant basis, this maintaining individual crop health.
The precision processing of every plant would be impossibly complicated and time consuming for humans to replicate.
The data could then be processed, analysed and potentially acted on without human command, e.g. if plants needed more fertilizer, then autonomous robots could resolve this – a world away from traditional arable farming methods.
Healthcare?
AI needs to be continuously trained in order to be fully utilised. Initially, it could be adopted to assist healthcare professionals as it could improve physicians’ diagnoses, and in doing so the technology could learn and improve.
This ultimately enhancing the accuracy of the capabilities of diagnostics and, over time, provide humans the option to delegate tasks entirely to AI systems to operate autonomously.
An example of AI in healthcare is Nexus Intelligent Engineering partnering with a globally leading healthcare company, to fast track the development of a smart hub that could make healthcare systems more efficient by offering real-time data on equipment.