The sixth annual International Innovation Barometer, conducted by innovation consultancy Ayming, finds that 84% of businesses believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) positively impacts innovation in terms of output and process.
“The barrier to entry has been lowered, and now businesses of all sizes can integrate AI into their operations without developing their systems from scratch, which they likely have neither the financial nor human resources to contemplate. Instead, as AI models are commoditised, we can expect to see competitive advantage shift from those that own AI technology towards those applying it most effectively,” Njy Rios, director of R&D Incentives at Ayming UK, said.
AI integration
The study also finds that 41% of businesses have already restructured their R&D teams to include AI in innovation. Implementing AI ranks as the second highest innovation priority, with 29% of respondents considering it their first concern.
Moreover, almost half (47%) of businesses allocate between 6 and 20% of their innovation budget to R&D in AI, while nearly 22% are devoting more than 20%.
The future of AI
“The future of AI will be shaped by hybrid models where human creativity and original thinking are optimised by AI’s analytical power, the latter enhancing rather than replacing the former. The way that generative AI has been built makes it incapable, at least for now, of producing original thoughts, which means it won’t ever be able to ‘innovate’ without human creative input,” Rios said.
