Lots of industries are embracing AI, just not all at the same pace

An analysis by data and AI company Databricks shows a surge in AI use across sectors, with data-driven decision-making and AI playing an increasingly important role in business strategies. According to the State of Data + AI Report 2024, there are clear differences by sector in the approach and adoption of AI.

The retail sector leads in AI adoption, with a remarkable 25 percent of developed models actually being used. According to the study, this high adoption rate appears to be driven by strong competitive pressures and high customer expectations, which facilitate (and necessitate) the smooth embrace of new technologies.

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Much testing in compliance-sensitive sector

The financial sector has the most testing going on: an average of 29 experiments per registered model. Although the industry is slow in adoption, the efficiency of models tested has tripled in the past year. This high amount of testing is not surprising, given compliance requirements and the regulatory pressures in this sector. The same goes for other regulated industries, such as healthcare.

Healthcare heavily uses natural language processing (NLP), with 69 percent of Python libraries focused on this technology. For example, NLP is primarily used to analyze large amounts of data for clinical research and drug development.

Manufacturing industry is catching up

In the manufacturing industry, the use of APIs for AI is taking off, with applications such as supply chain optimization and quality control. In addition, the use of NLP in this sector is growing by as much as 148 percent. This strong growth is because the industry initially lagged in this department and is now catching up.

According to Databricks, faster adoption of AI means broad transformation within companies. “As AI technology continues to evolve, organizations that embrace its potential and deploy a robust Data Intelligence Platform are very likely to gain competitive advantage.”

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