AI’s Early Adopters

Although the majority of organizations are using AI, we have discovered that those in some countries have had a head start.

Companies in China and Japan are more likely to be long-term users of AI, with 60% of Chinese organizations and 51% of Japanese organizations saying they have been using AI for three or more years. The majority of organizations in Germany and India say they have used AI for one or more years (67% and 64%, respectively).

These longer-term adopters of AI are more likely to say that innovation is their number one priority above anything else (89%, India; 81%, China; 81%, Japan; 80%, Germany). They also are more likely to have seen benefits from implementing AI more widely across their organizations. For example, engineers and executives in China say that their plant operations department has benefited the most from implementing AI in their organization (66% vs. 49% globally), while in India, 80% of organizations say that their product development has benefited the most from implementing AI (vs 68% globally).

The U.S. remains behind these countries, with 55% of organizations saying they’ve used AI for less than one year and just 9% responding that they’ve used AI for three or more years. Notably, only 65% of U.S. organizations said that innovation is their number one priority above anything else (vs. 79% globally). U.S. organizations that are not yet using AI are also more likely to say resistance from employees is the greatest challenge to AI adoption (41% vs. 23% globally).