New Delhi: As many as 39% of Indian organisations expect to raise their investment in artificial intelligence (AI) by more than 20% this year.

According to the second edition of Deloitte India’s ‘State of AI in India’ survey, which included 200 Indian business leaders as respondents, organisations planned a 50% increase in investment last year. As many as 88% of respondents anticipate increasing their AI investments year over year (YoY) in 2022, compared to 82% in 2021.

“There is still bullishness that investments in AI will go up. But the quantum of these investments will be driven by business outcomes,” said Prashanth Kaddi, partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.

“During the pandemic, there was a huge emphasis on digitization which has led to richer outcomes for AI/ML programs,” he said, adding organisations’ focus is on adopting AI for business value.

“Organizations’ increased investments in AI indicate their confidence in the technology to deliver on its promise. They are exploring AI for select use cases and achieving the desired business outcomes by bridging the gap between design and deployment and sustenance.”

There is concern among organizations about the impact of increasing AI integration on jobs. “The skill of the current workforce may not, perhaps, be relevant in the future with increasing AI integration. Organizations have started to take proactive measures to curb this, and they need to accelerate these practices.”

Organizations, however, are putting a major emphasis on the requirement for ethical AI integration. Companies are increasingly moving towards what Kaddi refers to as the “Age of With,” where AI and humans collaborate to tackle challenging issues.

“Human judgement and creativity amplifies and uses AI to make better decisions. We are expecting a synergistic approach between workers and AI going forward,” Kaddi said.

In six different industry sectors, the poll questioned a mix of private and public sector organisations.