Businesses must focus on ‘smart’ deployment of AI

Dubai: As an integral piece of technology, there is no denying AI’s prominence as an integral part of an organization’s IT infrastructure. The problem, however, is the readiness with which these entities are willing to adopt AI.

“IT leaders and teams recognize the outsize risks of the still-developing technology, heightened by the rush to build AI quickly rather than smartly,” said Krishna Sai, Senior VP, Technology and Engineering at SolarWinds, the IT management software company.

“With proper internal systems in place and by prioritizing security, fairness, and transparency while building AI, these technologies can serve as a valuable advisor and coworker to overworked teams, but this survey shows that IT pros need to be consulted as their companies invest in AI.”

SolarWinds has brought out a trend report – ‘AI: Friend or Foe’ - based on feedback from IT professionals. Around 700 tech professionals were surveyed, including 297 from the EMEA territory.

While IT pros have an interest, with nearly nine out of ten already using or planning to use AI, ‘concerns remain about data quality, database infrastructure readiness, and — above all else — security and privacy’.

Overall sentiments reflect ‘cautious optimism’ about AI despite the obstacles. Almost half of IT professionals want their company to move faster in implementing AI despite costs, challenges, and concerns, but only 34 per cent are ‘very confident that their company’s databases can meet the increased needs of AI’.

Only a third are ‘very trusting’ of the quality of data or training used in developing AI technologies.

For a secure AI adoption, organizations must develop consequential policies on ethics, data privacy and compliance. “Ethical considerations and concerns about job displacement are other significant barriers to AI adoption,” according to the report, which found that nearly a third of EMEA organizations still don’t have these policies in place to guide proper AI implementation.