A quarter of Taiwanese companies are well into their AI journey

At least a quarter of Taiwanese companies have begun operationalizing AI in the organization and reaping the business benefits, according to the latest State of Taiwan Enterprise AI report. A little less than 25% of respondents have either entered, or moved past,  the level 4 stage of the Enterprise AI Maturity Cycle — the phase where AI is being operationalized in the organization, with deployments showing business value.

Above: The State of Taiwan Enterprise AI Report found 24.8% of the respondents were at the state where AI has been operationalized, with deployments showing business value.

Image Credit: Hive Ventures

Most Taiwanese companies — at over 83 percent of those surveyed overall — have begun the development and deployment phase of introducing AI and machine learning into their organization. The report shows a strong level of commitment and action towards introducing AI and machine learning into organizations across the board.

Taiwanese enterprises are focused on AI to improve organizational efficiency, the report found. All the respondents ranked organizational efficiency higher than cost-cutting when considering their objectives for deploying AI. The fact that Taiwanese enterprises had higher deployment rates (20%, with some respondents claiming 50%) of models — mathematical algorithms trained using data — than the global rate (13%) is another indicator of just how much the organizations were concerned about improving efficiency, the report said.

Taiwan’s high model deployment rates were surprising, as they are considerably higher than previously published figures. This is likely due to:

• The rapidly growing wealth of experience globally on successful model deployment in various different use cases, and the information sharing of these successful case studies, have enabled Taiwanese enterprises to quickly learn and adopt these models, hence leading to higher success rates.
• Strong focus on “applicability” in research: The typical culture in Taiwanese Enterprises is the passion towards their ROI. Any investment into AI projects, would strongly focus in driving on its return and success rates.

While these KPI driven approach to AI adoption is effective for achieving quick wins, there is less exploratory research and experimentation on models that could push the frontier forward and  deepen adoption.

Access to quality data within the organization remains a key obstacle in AI adoption. Two-thirds of the respondents (67.6%) respondents said they were unable to access the data they needed for their business applications and operations.

The State of Taiwan Enterprise AI 2021 report analyzed the adoption of AI machine learning technologies and their applications by Taiwanese enterprises. It also drew comparisons between Taiwan and other economies to help local and global communities understand the AI transformation in enterprises.

Get the full State of Taiwan Enterprise AI Report in English.