Spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems will reach $77.6 billion in 2022 against $24 billion forecast for 2018.
The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2017-2022 forecast period will be 37.3 percent, according to a new IDC forecast.
Research firm PwC estimates that artificial intelligence could add $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030.
CB Insights, another research firm, has earlier released a list of top 100 technology companies in the AI segment.
“Organizations using these technologies to drive innovation are benefitting in terms of revenue, profit, and overall leadership in their respective industries and segments,” David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems at IDC, said.
Software will be representing around 40 percent of all cognitive/AI spending with a five-year CAGR of 43.1 percent. Conversational AI applications such as personal assistants and chatbots and deep learning and machine learning applications employed in a range of use cases are two areas of focus for these investments.
Hardware like servers and storage, the second largest area of spending until late in the forecast, will be overtaken by spending on related IT and business services.
Hardware for cognitive/AI will experience 30.6 percent CAGR growth over the forecast. IT and business services for cognitive/AI will experience 36.4 percent CAGR growth over the forecast.
The cognitive/AI use cases that will see the largest spending totals in 2018 are automated customer service agents ($2.9 billion), automated threat intelligence and prevention systems ($1.9 billion), sales process recommendation and automation ($1.7 billion) and automated preventive maintenance ($1.7 billion).
Pharmaceutical research and discovery (46.8 percent CAGR), expert shopping advisors & product recommendations (46.5 percent CAGR), digital assistants for enterprise knowledge workers (45.1 percent CAGR), and intelligent processing automation (43.6 percent CAGR) are the use cases that will see the fastest investment growth.
“We are also seeing more local governments keeping people safe with cognitive/AI systems,” Marianne Daquila, research manager Customer Insights & Analysis at IDC, said.
Banking will be spending more than $4 billion this year on cognitive/AI areas. Banking will devote more than half of its spending to automated threat intelligence and prevention systems and fraud analysis and investigation.
Retail will be spending more than $4 billion on cognitive/AI this year. Retail sector will focus on automated customer service agents and expert shopping advisors & product recommendations. Retail will move into the top position by the end of the forecast with a five-year CAGR of 40.7 percent.
