Juniper Networks has released the findings of a worldwide study demonstrating that an increase in corporate artificial intelligence (AI) usage over the previous 12 months has resulted in concrete advantages for businesses. However, there is still a scarcity of human talent, and governance regulations are still immature – all of which are required to properly manage AI’s growth when it comes to privacy concerns, regulatory compliance, hacking, and AI terrorism.
Juniper teamed up with Wakefield Research to poll 700 senior IT executives from across the world who are directly involved in their company’s AI and machine learning (ML) initiatives or implementations. The poll assesses public opinion on the benefits of AI, the maturity of AI deployments, and the difficulties that remain.
Thanks to pandemic-related digital acceleration and the development of AI technologies available, corporations have mostly moved past proof-of-concepts and limited trials of AI and are already deploying AI across their organizations, according to this year’s report.
While just 6 percent of C-level leaders have deployed AI-powered solutions throughout their enterprises (citing technological, skillset, and governance issues) in Juniper’s 2021 report, 63 percent of C-level leaders asked this year claim they are ‘most of the way’ to their intended AI adoption targets.
The Need for AI Governance
Despite this, just 9 percent of IT leaders perceive their AI governance and policies to be ‘completely mature,’ such as appointing a company-wide AI leader or developing responsible AI standards and practices. At the same time, more CEOs are prioritizing governance: 95 percent feel that having effective AI governance in place is critical to staying ahead of future laws, up from 87 percent in 2021.
Despite the fact that leadership recognizes the need for AI governance and has policies in place to manage, control, and maintain the technology, over half of respondents (48 percent) believe that more can be done to successfully govern AI.
“The disparity the data shows between the substantial increase in AI implementation in the enterprise and the immaturity of AI governance and policies is staggering,” said Sharon Mandell, Senior Vice President and CIO at Juniper Networks. “It will be critical for governance to pick up pace so that the positives of AI deployment overshadow existing fears of whether AI can be effectively controlled. This is a challenge not unique to AI, but all emerging technologies.”
AI Security, Hiring AI Professionals
The study conducted by Wakefield Research also revealed the following:
- Despite the increased reliance on AI, technology executives believe that it will not replace humans, but rather will help staff to save time and focus on more strategic and complex jobs. AI, according to around half of IT leaders, will allow staff to focus on being more inventive (55 percent), learning new skills (50 percent), and increasing employee engagement (47 percent).
- Security is a vital component of managing and safeguarding a business AI system, according to almost all AI/ML executives (95 percent). Cybersecurity has risen in prominence as the most important issue for AI adoption, with 29 percent saying it is the most important in 2022, compared to 14 percent in 2021.
- Almost all IT leaders (96 percent) believe that AI will help their organization reduce risk and improve quality in the next 12 months, with networking/cloud (25 percent), IT infrastructure (21 percent), and supply chain (15 percent) being the business functions most likely to benefit from AI implementation.
- Hiring the right people to run and build skills is one of the most important areas to spend in when it comes to AI optimization. Hiring the proper personnel to operate and build AI capabilities, further training AI models, and expanding the capabilities of the present AI tool into other business divisions are the top three investment alternatives for IT executives (21 percent each). Last year, recruiting people to build AI skills within an organization was chosen as the top investment priority for optimizing AI capabilities in companies by 26% of respondents, compared to 11% who said training end-users to engage successfully with the tools was the top priority.
“AI is ultimately designed to perform tasks on par with humans but at higher scale via automation. Many of Juniper’s own customers are leveraging cloud AI in their networks to dramatically cut support tickets, which frees up IT teams from the drudgery of tactical issues, allowing them to focus on improving end users’ experiences,” said Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer, Juniper Networks. “But with all the positives, enterprises need to responsibly manage AI’s growth with proper governance to stay ahead of regulation and minimize potential negative impacts. In Europe, for instance, we are seeing regulators starting to classify certain AI use cases as risky and requiring CE certification. AI regulation is changing quickly and business leaders must make AI governance a strategic priority.”
Executive Summary
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However, there is still a scarcity of human talent, and governance regulations are still immature
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Juniper teamed up with Wakefield Research to poll 700 senior IT executives from across the world
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63% of C-level leaders claim they are most of the way to their AI adoption targets
The Need for AI Governance
-
95 percent of CEOs feel that having effective AI governance in place is critical to staying ahead of future laws
-
Despite this, just 9 percent of IT leaders perceive their AI governance and policies to be ‘completely mature’
-
It will be critical for governance to pick up pace so that the positives of AI deployment overshadow fears of whether AI can be effectively controlled
AI Security, Hiring AI Professionals
-
Despite the increased reliance on AI, technology executives believe it will not replace humans
-
It will help staff to save time and focus on more strategic and complex jobs
-
Security is a vital component of managing and safeguarding a business AI system
-
Almost all IT leaders believe AI will help their organization reduce risk and improve quality in the next 12 months
-
Hiring the right people to run and build skills is one of the most important areas to spend in when it comes to AI optimization
-
Recruiting people to build AI skills is the top investment priority
