Chapter 1. AI Adoption in the Enterprise 2022

In December 2021 and January 2022, we asked recipients of our Data and AI Newsletters to participate in our annual survey on AI adoption. We were particularly interested in what, if anything, has changed since last year. Are companies farther along in AI adoption? Do they have working applications in production? Are they using tools like AutoML to generate models, and other tools to streamline AI deployment? We also wanted to get a sense of where AI is headed. The hype has clearly moved on to blockchains and NFTs. AI is in the news often enough, but the steady drumbeat of new advances and techniques has gotten a lot quieter.

Compared to last year, significantly fewer people responded. That’s probably a result of timing. This year’s survey ran during the holiday season (December 8, 2021, to January 19, 2022, though we received very few responses in the new year); last year’s ran from January 27, 2021, to February 12, 2021. Pandemic or not, holiday schedules no doubt limited the number of respondents.

Our results held a bigger surprise, though. The smaller number of respondents notwithstanding, the results were surprisingly similar to 2021. Furthermore, if you go back another year, the 2021 results were themselves surprisingly similar to 2020. Has that little changed in the application of AI to enterprise problems? Perhaps. We considered the possibility that the same individuals responded in both 2021 and 2022. That wouldn’t be surprising, ...