Survey: 82% of Firms Report Positive AI Impact
A new Gallagher survey of over 1,200 global businesses found that 82% of respondents are seeing positive impacts from AI adoption. Despite the benefits, companies identified data protection and the potential for errors as the top challenges they face when implementing artificial intelligence.
- According to the third annual Gallagher survey, 63% of businesses have now implemented AI in some capacity, a significant increase from 45% in the previous year. - Beyond the top-line challenges, key barriers to AI adoption include a shortage of skilled talent (30%), ethical and data privacy considerations (30%), and navigating complex compliance and regulatory issues (27%). - When it comes to operational risks, business leaders are most concerned about AI errors or "hallucinations" (57%), legal and reputational risk (56%), and data or privacy breaches (55%). - AI adoption is not uniform across departments; IT leads with 58% implementation, followed by customer service (37%) and finance (34%), while areas like procurement and risk management are lagging. - The most common applications for AI in businesses are currently focused on efficiency, including handling customer inquiries (36%), summarizing documents (35%), and writing emails (32%). - Addressing the human impact of AI is a key focus for companies, with 85% of survey respondents reporting they have introduced job protection strategies as part of their AI adoption framework. - More than a quarter of business leaders worry about AI's effect on employee engagement and morale, and 20% see a reduction in leadership trust as a potential risk of using AI. - Cybersecurity experts caution that AI is enabling more sophisticated threats, such as highly targeted phishing campaigns that leverage personal information from social media and are harder to detect due to flawless grammar and spelling.
