Survey: 82% of Firms See Positive AI Impact
A global survey of over 1,200 businesses by insurance brokerage Gallagher found that 82% of respondents report positive impacts from adopting AI. Despite the benefits, companies identified data protection and the potential for errors as their top challenges in implementing the technology.
- According to Gallagher's 2024 "Attitudes to AI Adoption and Risk Benchmarking Survey," while 68% of business leaders view AI as an opportunity, this is a decrease from 82% the previous year, with the perception of AI as a risk doubling from 5% to 11%. - The top three applications of AI currently in use by businesses are handling customer inquiries (36%), summarizing documents (35%), and writing emails (32%). - A significant hurdle to broader AI adoption is a shortage of skilled talent, which has replaced technical infrastructure as a primary barrier for many organizations. In response, 45% of businesses are upskilling their current workforce with AI-specific training programs. - While there is a high level of confidence in understanding AI-related risks (93%), over half of the businesses surveyed point to AI errors and misinformation (57%), legal or reputational risk (56%), and data privacy breaches (55%) as top threats. - The average time businesses anticipate for the return on investment in AI to outweigh the initial costs is 28 months. - Larger companies are adopting AI more readily, with 82% of firms with over 250 employees using AI, compared to under 20% of businesses with fewer than 50 employees. - From a departmental perspective, IT leads in AI implementation at 58%, followed by customer service at 37% and finance at 34%. - Looking ahead, 83% of business leaders believe that the adoption of AI will be a driver of future revenue growth for their organizations.
