Growing Divide Between Firms That Invest In AI and Those That Don’t

As per a British research, only 36 per cent of UK employers have invested in AI-enabled technologies

The UK risks a growing divide between organisations who have invested in new, artificial intelligence-enabled digital technologies and those who haven’t, new research suggests. Only 36 per cent of UK employers have invested in AI-enabled technologies such as industrial robots, chatbots, smart assistants and cloud computing over the past five years, according to a nationally representative survey from the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit). The survey was carried out between November 2021 and June 2022, with a second wave now under way.

Academics at the University of Leeds, with colleagues at the universities of Sussex and Cambridge, led the research, finding that just 10 per cent of employers who hadn’t already invested in AI-enabled technologies were planning to invest in it in the next two years. The new data also points to a growing skills problem. Less than 10 per cent of employers foresaw a need to make an investment in digital skills training in the coming years, despite 75 per cent finding it difficult to recruit people with the right skills. Almost 60 per cent of employers reported that none of their employees had received formal digital skills training in the past year.

The main reasons for investing were improving efficiency, productivity and product and service quality, according to the survey. On the other hand, the key reasons for non-investment were the irrelevance of AI to the business activity, wider business risks and the nature of skills demanded. There was little evidence in this survey to suggest that investing in AI-enabled technology leads to job losses. In fact, digital adopters were more likely to have increased their employment in the five-year period before the survey.