AWS puts the AI in Australia

It’s less than five years since artificial intelligence burst back into the business conscious, but in that time it has made enormous inroads worldwide. So often an early adopter of new technology, Australian business is once again living up to its reputation in the race to adopt AI technology.

The majority of large – think ASX50, household name – brands are already experimenting with some sort of AI – whether machine learning, deep learning, chatbots or robotic process automation, according to recent market studies. [1]
A growing number of businesses have managed to shift out of experimentation and into live production use cases. And yet, we’re still at the very beginning of where this current iteration of AI will lead us.

Analyst firm Gartner’s much-referenced hype cycle shows a two-to-five year lead time before AI technologies such as machine learning and deep learning become a mainstay driver of business productivity. That is perhaps overly conservative. The pace of technology development, innovation and adoption within the AI space at present suggests it will become a pervasive part of business’ ways of working in a much shorter time frame.
This report shows businesses wanting to participate in the AI boom and accelerate their adoption and realisation of value should do three things:

• Get started
• Get skilled
• Get scale

In this qualitative study, we examine how six Australian businesses – ANZ Bank, nib, Airtasker, Stackla, Whooshkaa and Tech Mpire – are stepping through this journey.

We explore in detail their use cases, their technology choices, and how they envision their future in an AI-powered world.