Most Indian organisations plan raising AI investment this year: Report

Amount will be driven by 'business outcomes', according to survey of 200 business leaders

As many as 39 per cent of Indian organisations plan to increase investment in artificial intelligence (AI) by more than 20 per cent this year, said a report on Wednesday.

Organisations planned a 50 per cent increase in investment last year, according to Deloitte India’s second edition of the ‘State of AI in India’ survey that had 200 Indian business leaders as its respondents. As many as 88 per cent of respondents plan a year-on-year (YoY) increase in AI investments in 2022 compared to 82 per cent in 2021.

“There is still bullishness that investments in AI will go up. But the quantum of these investments will be driven by business outcomes,” said Prashanth Kaddi, partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.

“During the pandemic, there was a huge emphasis on digitization which has led to richer outcomes for AI/ML programs,” he said, adding organisations' focus is on adopting AI for business value.

“Organizations’ increased investments in AI indicate their confidence in the technology to deliver on its promise. They are exploring AI for select use cases and achieving the desired business outcomes by bridging the gap between design and deployment and sustenance."

There is concern among organizations about the impact of increasing AI integration on jobs. “The skill of the current workforce may not, perhaps, be relevant in the future with increasing AI integration. Organizations have started to take proactive measures to curb this, and they need to accelerate these practices.”

However, organizations are strongly emphasizing the need for ethical AI integration. Firms are now heading towards, what Kaddi calls, the ‘Age of With’, where AI and humans work in tandem to solve complex problems.

“Human judgement and creativity amplifies and uses AI to make better decisions. We are expecting a synergistic approach between workers and AI going forward,” Kaddi said.

The survey questioned a mix of private- and public-sector organisations in six industry sectors.