Print this page
Published in AI

AI departments short staffed

by on09 June 2022


If only they could be replaced by software


A study of UK enterprise leaders has found that AI departments in the UK are facing extreme staff shortages.

SambaNova Systems said that new research into AI adoption within enterprise organisations found that AI departments were being developed intensely especially around large language models such as GPT.

“AI is becoming a huge driver of value to businesses and is set to contribute trillions to the global economy over the next decade. Business leaders are aware of the potential value of AI. However, benefiting from it requires technology teams to deliver; this is where difficulty surfaces for most organisations,” the report said.

The data from the study shows that enterprise technology leaders in the UK are eagerly adopting AI models and algorithms. Keeping pace with the speed of model and data growth, however, is an increasing challenge. More than 80 per cent of IT leaders surveyed report that it’s a challenge to keep up. They also report that it’s difficult to deploy the algorithms once identified.

UK enterprise challenges highlighted in the research include:

Finding or customising models and algorithms – 67 per cent
Setting up infrastructure – 43 per cent
Preparing data – 38 per cent
Finding Sara Conner – 20 per cent (we made the last one up)

Marshall Choy, SVP Product at SambaNova commented on the findings: “Our research shows that enterprise business leaders understand the value they can derive from AI today. But the technology teams tasked with delivering on their goals are struggling to keep up – both from a technology and a resourcing point of view.”

For business leaders, AI is a driver of business value, and more than half (54%) said that AI’s business impact will be “transformational” or “significantly improve the business” over the next 12-24 months. Only 19 per cent said it will have “no impact at all.”

For enterprise technology leaders, finding skilled staff across all technology disciplines is difficult. However, the challenge is particularly acute in the specialist field of AI.

Almost three-fifths of IT managers reported that they have the budget to hire additional resources for their AI teams while 82 per cent said that hiring the skilled staff is challenging. Over half said that retention is a challenge too.

 

Last modified on 09 June 2022
Rate this item
(2 votes)