73% of IT professionals from Brazilian companies exploring or implementing AI have accelerated their investments and deployment of this technology in the last 24 months
New market research commissioned by IBM (NYSE: IBM) revealed that global adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has grown steadily worldwide, with 41% of companies in Brazil indicating that they have actively implemented the technology. This further underscores that AI's growth is about to accelerate as it continues to mature, becoming more accessible and easier to implement.
Other data from Global AI Adoption Index 2022, led by Morning Consult for IBM, revealed that this growth is due to companies recognizing the value of AI as they are emerging from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and investing in their digital transformation while facing talent and skills shortages. . In Brazil, adoption is being driven by advances that make AI more accessible to businesses (56%), its increasing incorporation into standard business applications (48%), and the need to reduce costs and automate key processes (39%).
For the first time, the report also asked companies about their plans to incorporate AI into their sustainability initiatives and found that this technology is poised to play a significant role in this area. As an example, 66% of IT professionals in Brazil indicated that, to accelerate their ESG initiatives, their company is implementing AI or has plans to do so.
Notable findings from the “Global AI Adoption Index 2022” include:
AI adoption is constantly growing
Today, 41% of companies in Brazil report that they use AI in their business operations and 34% of companies report that they are exploring the use of AI. Currently, 73% of IT professionals from Brazilian companies exploring or implementing AI have accelerated their investments and deployment of this technology in the last 24 months. Additionally, 60% indicates that your company has plans to invest in AI adoption through its incorporation into processes and applications.
Defining clear data and AI strategies is critical for horizontal implementation
An important explanation for the gradual adoption of AI is the need to implement a successful data management strategy. According to the study, in Latin America, ensuring information security is considered the most difficult part of an organization's data management strategy, regardless of its size.
- IT professionals in Latin America who are currently exploring AI are more likely to identify data management challenges for their company, with more than half saying it is difficult to ensure data security (51%) and governance, compliance and privacy (50%) ).
- Currently, 43% of Brazilian companies exploring or implementing AI have a holistic strategy. Only 10% have plans focused on limited or specific use cases.
Automation is helping to address skills gaps and labor shortages
More than costs, lack of tools, project or data complexity, limited AI skills, experience or knowledge remain the biggest barrier to AI adoption in Latin America. At the same time, AI is also helping organizations address skills shortages, for example by automating tasks for skilled workers so they can be more productive or using AI-assisted learning. 41% of IT professionals in Brazil indicate that their organizations are training and retraining their employees to work together with new automation and AI tools/software. Also, 40% says their employees are happy to work on it and 26% mentions that their employees are already saving time. Finally, nearly one in four companies in Latin America see improvements in reducing labor and skills shortages in their IT departments.
A growing emphasis on trust, but few concrete actions
Establishing credible and responsible AI practices goes hand in hand with AI maturity, as the greater the likelihood that a company has deployed AI, the greater the chance of valuing the importance of reliability.
- A large proportion of IT professionals at companies exploring or deploying AI in Latin America indicate that all aspects of trust and transparency are important to their business. According to the study, the most important in Brazil are: meeting internal reporting obligations (98%), maintaining brand integrity and customer trust (98%), and having the ability to monitor data and AI throughout the lifecycle. life (98%).
- However, while the vast majority of business leaders indicate that trusted AI is critical, not all organizations in Country/Latin America take steps to ensure their AI is accountable and trustworthy, such as reducing bias (21%), tracking performance and/or model drift (49%) and focus on ensuring that the decisions they make can be explained (49%).
Building more sustainable operations
AI is poised to play an increasing role in the sustainability initiatives of organizations around the world, with more than two-thirds of companies using or planning to use AI as part of their sustainability initiatives. As an example, IT professionals in Brazil believe that AI has great potential to help solve ESG/sustainability challenges, such as providing more accurate and verifiable information on environmental performance factors for reporting (43%) and driving business processes and operations. more efficient daily operations, such as improved supply chain, operations and manufacturing (37%).
Popular uses like automation and safety drive adoption
In Latin America, organizations are applying AI in a wide variety of use cases, with the most advanced adoption in areas such as IT operations, cybersecurity and business process automation.
- In the region, IT professionals at companies that deploy AI report that it is used for security/threat detection (44%) and conversational AI (44%), while those exploring only AI generally report that it is being used for marketing and sales (30%).
- 30% companies are employing AI for IT operations (AIOps) to automate key processes to maintain application performance while also making resource allocation more efficient.
“Organizations in Latin America, including Brazil, surveyed in the IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022, are using AI today to respond to the different challenges and pressures they face, from business operations and skills shortages to sustainability initiatives,” said Marcela Vairo, Director of Data & AI at IBM Brazil. “With 83% of companies in Brazil, whether implementing a holistic strategy for using AI in their organizations or developing one, this is just a taste of the growing role AI is playing in business and society.”
As investment in AI continues to grow, there are still barriers to its adoption in Brazil, particularly for smaller organizations that are significantly less likely to take advantage of AI. The research indicated that the main barriers to AI adoption for Brazilian companies are: high prices (29%), complexity or difficulty in integrating and scaling AI projects (20%), data complexity (17%) and limited AI skills, experience or knowledge (17%). IBM is helping to break down these barriers and bring the benefits of this technology to more people and organizations in every industry with human-centric AI designed for business needs.
IBM continually builds on the latest AI innovations from IBM Research to provide new business-ready capabilities, help them automate technical and manual processes such as IT operations, develop new ways of operating, and help ensure that ethics of AI is observed. In addition, IBM Consulting brings deep technology, industry and process design expertise to co-create solutions with clients that embed AI into their core business processes and create intelligent workflows at scale.
Download the complete study on here.
Methodology
This survey was conducted from March 30 to April 12, 2022, with a sample of 7,502 senior business decision makers with some knowledge/influence over their company's technology decisions, including 500 respondents in each of the countries, such as US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, China, India, Singapore, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates and South Korea, and 1,000 respondents across the Latin American region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru). The interviews were conducted online and the margin of error for the full sample in each country is +/-4 percentage points; the margin of error for the Latin America region is +/-3 percentage points with a confidence level of 95%. See full methodology details at the end of the summary.
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