Artificial intelligence is transforming business, AI Forum executive director Madeline Newman says.

In partnership with Victoria University, it has released its third survey which showed AI adoption had reached 93% across surveyed organisations with 77% achieving genuine financial returns and 91% seeing efficiency gains as a result of AI.

“Organisations and business across all sectors, including media, engineering, education and local government, have less administrative burden and increased productivity,” she said.

The cost of introducing AI tools had dropped dramatically; 75% of organisations were spending less than $5000 on set-up costs.

Previously, 30% of organisations surveyed spent more than $50,000 on AI setup and now fewer than 7% were spending that amount or more on expensive bespoke tools.

When she started in the role more than three years ago, large organisations wanting to adopt AI into their business were looking at a million-dollar plus investment, Ms Newman said.

The price drop meant it was making it more accessible while there was also a lot smaller organisations could do themselves with no coding.

AI was definitely creating productivity gains and helping organisations do more with less or more with what they already had, Ms Newman said.

In the first two surveys, the number of organisations reporting job losses as a result of AI was 7%. That figure had now doubled in the past six months to 14%.

“When an organisation becomes more productive, they tend to free up resources. Due to the current economic challenges businesses are facing, it isn’t surprising to see staff numbers reducing,” she said.

There was also a reduction in the number of new hires for new roles as they were able to do more with the staff they had. That trend had steadily increased over the past year.

“Leaders are telling us that using these tools means their existing staff can focus on more high value work,” says Ms Newman. “It also means we need to support Kiwis to adapt to the rapid and far-reaching changes driven by these emerging technologies.”

If businesses upskilled existing staff, then “everybody wins” as the staff member got career mobility and the organisation had people who already knew their business.

Graduates were now starting to come out of universities with AI qualifications and that was the other main source of talent.

Globally, there was a shortage of AI talent so the combination of upskilling existing staff and bringing on graduates was the best source of getting talent in that space.

New Zealand’s productivity levels were low from an international perspective and so taking that approach provided an opportunity to “leapfrog”.

“The other thing about upskilling your workforce is when you have people from your community building your tech, your tech fits your community. If it comes from somewhere else … it won’t fit really well,” she said.

Founded in 2017, the forum brought together New Zealand’s AI community, including end users, investors, regulators, researchers, educators, entrepreneurs and interested public.

Originally from New Zealand, Ms Newman previously spent 20 years in the United Kingdom, working in operational architecture, helping people work with systems, processes and technology.

While there were risks associated with AI, the forum was about helping people and organisations adopt AI responsibly. There was still a lot of work to be done around AI literacy and trust, she said.

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