The majority of businesses using AI are doing so due to “pressure from competitors,” it has been revealed. New research from Tech.co reveals that most companies are scared that if they don’t invest in the burgeoning technology, they face being cut adrift from their rivals.
The latest “Impact of Technology on the Workplace” report shines a light on how businesses are responding to the rapid growth of AI, which is fast becoming an essential tool. Other reasons for investing in the technology include “pressure from investors” and “pressure from stakeholders.”
Overall, our study illustrates that these fears are not unfounded. If companies do fail to implement an AI strategy, they will be left behind. At the same time, it illuminates a future in which the technology is used for increasingly sophisticated and critical tasks.
“Pressure from Competitors” The Reason Most Businesses Using AI
58% of businesses using AI started doing so because of “pressure from competitors,” our latest Tech.co research has found.
The “Impact of Technology on the Workplace” report surveyed over 1,000 senior executives and managers of companies with more than 10 employees. When asked where pressure to implement AI was coming from, the majority indicated that it came from a perceived need to keep up with the competition.
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Increasingly, the technology appears to have created a “who blinks first” environment, with decisionmakers paying close attention to rival companies before they put their own plans into action.
All Parties Putting the Pressure On
Since the emergence of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has developed at a scarcely believable rate, with adoption skyrocketing in the last 12 months. Last year, many business leaders were unconvinced by the technology’s potential – now, just 15% of the businesses we surveyed had yet to invest in it in some form.
This shakeup is being felt from the mailroom up to the boardroom, with other factors for the AI uptake including “pressure from investors” (41%) and “pressure from stakeholders” (30%).
But the race to automation has yet to fully play out. At present, the biggest use case for AI in business is written tasks, including emails, reports, and presentations, with 43% of AI-using businesses leveraging the technology in this way. After that, it is data analysis (37%), customer support and chatbots (33%), and design tasks (25%).
AI Will Continue to Revolutionize Business World This Year
The findings point to a shared recognition that AI is an inevitability. Not only does this indicate that failure to get on board will end in disaster, but it paints a pretty compelling picture of what the future will look like.
Our report has uncovered lots of benefits of AI in the workplace – we found that it helps relieve pressure on employees, allowing them to farm out daily admin tasks to AI, enabling them to focus their energies on more critical matters. It also could well spearhead the 4-day week. Of the companies we surveyed, those that used AI were much more receptive to the idea of introducing a shortened week.
AI is still very much in its infancy, and not all change is likely to be positive as companies race to outdo competitors. As more and more companies join the revolution, we’ll likely see a wider variety of increasingly critical tasks becoming automated. In turn, this could lead to mass layoffs, with businesses turning to the technology at the expense of human workers. However, as great as AI is, it’s not infallible, and many companies are likely to learn this lesson the hard way, which could end up hampering them in the race against their competitors.
