Artificial intelligence adoption gathering momentum

Over 47 per cent of the CEOs in China that participated in a survey said there are some forms of AI initiatives currently in place in their organisation, compared with 42 per cent globally. In addition, 39 per cent of the Chinese executives indicated that they have plans to start introducing AI initiatives in their organisation in the next three years, four percentage points higher than their global counterparts.
Only 14 per cent of the Chinese executives said they have no plans to pursue any AI initiatives at the moment, much lower than the global average of 23 per cent, according to the report.
The report covered responses from 176 executives based on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong between September and October 2018.
Zhou Xing, PwC North China and Beijing office lead partner, said AI adoption in Chinese companies has benefited from the rapid growth in R&D expenditure. PwC’s 2018 Global Innovation 1000 study showed that Chinese companies’ R&D spending increased by 34.4 per cent year-on-year to US$60.08 billion (Bt1.9 trillion) last year, marking the largest growth globally.
“Over the last decade, China has made remarkable progress to become the world’s artificial intelligence powerhouse. Advances in data collection and algorithms, and the prevalence of mobile devices, coupled with aggressive R&D spending, have helped the country achieve major breakthroughs in the AI realm,” the report said.
The market value of China’s AI industry reached 23.7 billion yuan (Bt112.36 billion) in 2017, up 67 per cent year-on-year, and it was expected to grow by 75 per cent in 2018. The top three segments of the market were computer vision, voice and natural language processing, said a report on AI development issued by the China Institute for Science and Technology Policy at Tsinghua University.
As of June 2018, the Chinese mainland ranked second in the world in terms of the number of AI enterprises (1,011), although still far behind the United States (2,028), according to the institute.
PwC found that the businesses in China are believers in AI, with 84 per cent of the Chinese executives surveyed agreeing that the technology is likely to have a larger impact on the world than the internet revolution.
Most Chinese executives expect the government to play a critical and integral role in AI development. More than 90 per cent of them said governments should incentivise organisations to retrain workers whose jobs are automated by AI. Other expectations for the government include providing a safety net to people displaced by AI (82 per cent) and introducing incentives to accelerate the development and use of AI (84 per cent).
Chinese business leaders are also hoping for regulatory relaxation.