European enterprise survey on the use of technologies based on artificial intelligence

This study aimed to conduct the first EU-wide survey on the uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) Technologies among enterprises. The survey reached a total of 9640 enterprises in January – March 2020 and measured five KPIs: AI awareness, AI adoption, AI sourcing, external and internal obstacles to AI adoption.

Awareness of AI is high across the EU (78%). Four in ten (42%) enterprises have adopted at least one AI technology, 25% have adopted at least two. While 18% have plans to adopt AI in the next two years, 40% have neither adopted AI nor plan to do so. Adoption at the level of each technology is still relatively low: from 3% for sentiment analysis to 13% for anomaly detection and process/equipment optimisation. The most common sourcing strategy is external, as 59% of EU enterprises that use AI purchase software or ready-to-use systems. Three key internal barriers to AI adoption are difficulties in hiring new staff with the right skills (57%), the cost of adoption (52%) and the cost of adapting operational processes (49%). Reducing uncertainty can be beneficial, as enterprises find liability for potential damages (33%), data standardisation (33%) and regulatory obstacles (29%) to be major external challenges to AI adoption.

This executive summary presents an overview of the results of the first EU-wide survey on the uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as part of a project commissioned by DG Connect. The assignment took place in two phases: a conceptual development phase and an execution phase. Phase I included a thorough review of the literature, scoping the definitions of AI-based technologies, identifying the relevant KPIs and developing an appropriate survey instrument.