Report Examines AI Readiness and ROI

NEW YORK and LONDON — A new report that addresses AI return on investment at companies shows that leaders “significantly overestimate” their organization’s AI readiness while employees lack crucial training.

The report released this week, “The ROI of AI,” is by Multiverse, an on-the-job learning company.

“The ROI of AI” reveals “stark differences” between executives and employees over AI effectiveness, how to measure impact of AI and the need for AI training and skills. Multiverse believes the disconnect threatens to undermine AI's ROI and economic growth potential.

Multiverse’s report is based on a survey of 810 business leaders and 1,190 employees across the U.S. and the U.K.

These are the report’s key findings:

AI for Productivity

• Improved productivity and operational efficiency (96%) are a key AI benefit, while almost half (48%) say that AI helped decrease unnecessary external costs in the last 12 months

AI for CX and UX

• 96% say customer and user experience has improved over the last 12 months due to AI

AI for Revenue

• 80% of tech leaders say implementing AI led to an increase in revenue generation

AI Security

• 90% believe they kept their organization's data safe while using AI
• However, 28% of organizations have established best practices in AI governance and risk management

AI Ethics

• 93% of workers are confident they used AI ethically in their last application
  

AI ROI

• While 49% of business leaders say they track AI's ROI, 44% use this data to improve their AI projects
• The gap is holding back further AI adoption, with 57% of leaders saying they can't clearly show or predict AI's benefits
  

AI Disconnect Between Leadership and Employees

• 61% of leaders believe AI is fully implemented across their organization, compared to 36% of employees
• 60% of leaders think they're ahead of competitors in AI maturity, while 46% of employees agree
• Leaders say their biggest blocker to further investment is the inability to fully use existing AI technology (63%), followed by resistance from employees to use AI (58%)
• 56% of self-proclaimed "AI experts" have had no formal training

AI Maturity

• AI beginner (22%): Proof of concept stage, developing pilot projects
• AI explorer (51%): Early stage, integrating AI into specific business processes
• AI adept (27%): Fully integrated, embedding AI throughout the organization
• Notably, 45% of organizations categorized as AI beginners still consider AI fully implemented, highlighting a significant perception gap

Here’s the online report: “The ROI of AI.”