Lack of AI playbook puts Australia down readiness ranks
The lack of clear plans or trained staff has dragged Australia down the AI readiness rankings over the past year, even though most employees remain concerned about the effect it will have on their jobs.
ServiceNow released the findings from its AI Maturity Index on Monday, leading experts to warn businesses to reassess their plans for artificial intelligence or risk missing out on productivity gains.
The warning comes as the federal government prepares to host a summit on boosting productivity, and after the Productivity Commission named AI as one of its five focus areas for the coming year.
The company's AI Maturity Index, prepared with Oxford Economics, surveyed more than 4400 senior business leaders from 16 countries including 560 Australian executives.
It found Australian businesses were less prepared to implement AI than they were in the previous year, falling from a score of 46 points out of 100 to 35.
The lower grade reflects one in three business leaders saying their companies had a clear vision to change using AI, and 37 per cent said they had the right mix of skills and talent in their workforce.
The result was particularly surprising, ServiceNow emerging technology director Dani Magnusson said, as most Australian companies planned to increase AI spending over the coming year.
"We've got 82 per cent of organisations investing in AI but only a third of those organisations setting a clear vision and strategy for how it gets implemented across the organisation," she told AAP.
"Businesses aren't planning for AI."
Keeping the technology "siloed" in individual business departments was holding back progress, Ms Magnussen said, although businesses should also consider whether their employees had the right skills to implement AI reform.
"There's no question it will give us more productivity and more capacity and it will take away some of the parts of the jobs and the roles that we don't enjoy doing today," she said.
But the survey also identified widespread fear among employees, with six in 10 Australian executives saying workers had raised concerns about job security due to generative AI.
The research predicted the technology could be used to automate 670,000 roles by 2030, while it created a comparatively few 150,000 technology jobs.
The findings should encourage more workers to learn about the technology, management consultancy Bain & Company's Asia Pacific AI head Richard Fleming said, and for organisations to make AI tools available to staff for experimentation.
"It's now our responsibility to start individually using AI and working out how do I use it in my everyday life, how do I use it at work to build skills and understanding," he told AAP.
"We should be embracing AI and training people on how to use it, training them on the risks, and that becomes a broad responsibility."
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