Are UK businesses leveraging AI effectively to stay competitive on the global stage? To explore this critical topic, I invited Dr. Nicola Hodson, Chief Executive of IBM UK&I, to share her invaluable insights on AI adoption within UK enterprises and the steps necessary to ensure the UK's competitive edge in technology.
IBM's recent Global AI Adoption Index reveals a stark reality: while over a third of large UK enterprises have embraced AI, with another 40% experimenting, the UK still trails behind global leaders like India, China, and Singapore. This discrepancy poses a significant challenge, especially after the Global AI Summit's ambition to position the UK as a forefront player in AI innovation.
Dr. Hodson will delve into the nuances of the report, highlighting the critical barrier of AI skills shortage facing UK companies and how this impediment can be overcome. She'll discuss strategies for fostering responsible AI development that doesn't compromise safety or ethics, closing the AI and tech skills gap, leveraging technology to bridge the productivity gap, and rethinking cybersecurity in the AI era.
This episode promises to shed light on the current state of AI adoption in the UK and explore how embracing technology can propel UK businesses to global competitiveness. We'll examine the implications of the AI skills gap, ethical AI development, and the transformative potential of technology in driving business innovation and productivity.
As we navigate these complex topics with Dr. Hodson, we invite you to reflect on the role of AI in your industry or business. How can AI serve as a catalyst for innovation and growth in your domain? Please share your thoughts and join the conversation as we explore the future of AI in business, guided by one of the leading voices in the field.
What steps can your organization take to adopt AI and do so responsibly and competitively on a global scale? Let's discuss.
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. Now looking at the stats, we've got a lot of new listeners from all over the world joining us today. So a big warm welcome to you. If you are a first time listener or a long time listener, but if you've never contacted me, remember techblogwriteroutlook.com, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, at Neil C Hughes. If you want to continue the conversation of anything that we talk about here, send me a quick direct message and email and audio recording, whatever it is India, China and Singapore. But the question I find myself asking is, why is this? And more importantly, how can we bridge this gap? Now, Dr. Hudson, let's get today's guest on. Buckle up and hold on tight because no matter where you're listening in the world, I'm going to be beaming your ears all the way to London here in the UK, where Nicola Hodson, chief executive of IBM, UK and Ireland,
[00:03:02] is waiting to join us today.
[00:03:05] So a massive warm welcome to the show, Nicola.
[00:04:04] and wired from India, China and Singapore. So what would you say are the main challenges holding the UK businesses back from accelerating AI adoption? Is it that fear of regulation or
[00:04:10] privacy or is it something else? Yeah, it's really interesting when you look at the
[00:04:15] outlook from that study. The UK, we saw around 37% of enterprise companies. So they're companies is data complexity and those challenges need to be addressed proactively and quickly if UK companies want to stay ahead, get in that, et cetera. Then we have a big client engineering team that can work with companies just to build out what are those pilots, the use cases where they can test and try AI, get themselves familiar, and then figure out which ones are going to be most work smarter, not harder, the transformational impacts. But then the second half is pretty much always about addressing the increasing concerns around AI ethics. So how do you at IBM approach the development of responsible AI? Because it is such a huge topic right now. And also, how can businesses ensure that AI initiatives are both ethical and effective?
[00:08:26] Because as I said, huge talking point data come from, which pieces of data are being used to involved in your AI decision making as possible, helps you mitigate against bias, helps you put those solid foundations in at the start. And then, we have and many other companies have an ethics
[00:11:02] committee or an ethics board that can help you think through the scenarios that you might I listened a while back to a podcast on Radio 4, they were talking about the advent of the washing machine and it was going to change work forever, housework, women's work, et cetera. I think many jobs will change. You said it, there'll be new roles that we haven't even
[00:12:21] thought about yet. And so it's really schools, higher education colleges, universities, et cetera, to implement that program. And then we partner with people like the National Cyber Security Centre. They have a cyber first program and. I'll give you a couple of examples in my own world. Our consulting team launched IBM Consulting Advantage recently and it gives the consultants access to AI assistance for specific tasks. It's powered by What's more accessible than making life easier for us. Absolutely love that. And for any business leaders that could be listening anywhere in the world, particularly the UK, because that's where the conversation's taking us today, but in terms of technology strategies, any insights on how UK businesses or any business
[00:16:20] can leverage AI and other technologies
[00:16:23] to help close that productivity gap
[00:16:25] and ultimately compete on that global stage? of traction at the moment. So UK businesses, I would definitely lock in those spaces also in the back office at simple use cases. But most importantly, I think it's important to get a clear science, a clear strategy around where's AI going to really help you move the
[00:17:42] commercial needle of your business? And then what are the small sorts of use cases. I mentioned some of them, but I think in day-to-day life, you will have come across Mickey Bank with NatWest. You've probably seen and probably interacted with Cora, the digital assistant. We announced late last year that Gen AI is
[00:19:00] now being infused into that digital assistant. So that's a real life example. We do some at the moment, looking ahead, I know it's an impossible question to ask at the moment with the speed of technological change, but how do you potentially see AI and automation shaping the future of work here in the UK? Anything that businesses should be doing now to maybe prepare for those changes ahead? Yeah, I think we'll see lots more assistants working alongside us, I think particularly
[00:20:20] customer services applications, a good place to track your emissions over time and how you optimize them. Again, AI can help you with that. Security is another space where AI is big. Again, it's infused into the software.
[00:21:47] When you think about the rising demands placed on all companies to be secure, that helps you to we can look forward to when you add AI together with quantum computing. And there's already some incredible research going on around drug discovery, vaccine development, new material discovery, and things like really fast and smart risk and fraud detection models.
[00:23:02] So thinking a bit further out and if don't quite understand it. So, you know, just putting all of that together and then of course there's formal training that you can tap into. But I think it's ping me. But that's there to build AI fundamentals and deeper tech skills if people need that. So there's lots out there and most of it's available
[00:25:42] for free. And then if anyone wants to explore and get stuck into use cases or talks and lore about a focus on some of the findings in the UK report, everything we talked about could be related to any country, anywhere in the world. We've explored the spectrum from the ethical dilemmas and the skill shortages to the strategic imperatives that can propel businesses forward. These are universal issues. IBM's focus on addressing these challenges through initiatives like Skills Build and
[00:27:03] Fostering Responsible AI Development, for me this underscores a nuanced journey towards