The state of artificial intelligence

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer an avant-garde concept—it’s a technological reality that businesses need to prepare for. Some early adopters are forging ahead, turning to forms of AI to perform or augment tasks traditionally done by humans. For example, robotic process automation is replacing repetitive tasks such as data entry; natural language processing is being used to generate meaning from human speech; and machine learning is now processing, analyzing, and acting on vast amounts of data.

In a Deloitte survey of 1,500 senior executives in the United States, 76 percent said AI would transform their companies within the next three years, and 92 percent said the technology was “important” or “very important” to their internal business processes.

But, the survey also found, challenges abound—the high cost of implementation, the complexity of integrating AI technologies with existing systems, and a shortage of expertise among them. The following interactive infographic illustrates AI’s transformative potential as well as its current complications.