Survey shows that more than 80% of Japanese companies have not yet fully embraced AI

IT House reported on August 13 that a Reuters survey released today showed that more than 80% of Japanese companies only use AI to a limited extent or not at all in their operations. About 60% of respondents said AI is used only in some parts of their company or in other limited ways. Another 18% of respondents said they were undecided about introducing AI in the workplace, while 6% were not even considering its use. The remaining 16% of Japanese companies have adopted AI as an indispensable tool, according to the survey. "We have started using it company-wide, but its use is limited to tasks such as document creation," a manager at a wholesaler wrote in the survey. "We don't know how to leverage it," a real estate company executive said. A government report this year showed that Japan lags behind other industrial powers in AI applications, with 86.4% of domestic companies using generative AI for at least one task, compared with 98.1% in China, 91.6% in Germany and the United States. 90.9%. When asked about their AI budgets over the next one to two years, 4% of Japanese companies said they expected annual growth of 50% or more, 21% said growth could be between 10% and 50%, and 30% expected single-digit growth, according to the Reuters survey. Another 14% said their AI budgets are likely to remain about the same, while 31% are undecided. All respondents said they would not reduce spending on AI. The survey was conducted between July 29 and August 6 by Nikkei Research with help from Reuters, which contacted 510 companies, 219 of which responded on condition of anonymity. In terms of resource allocation, 82% of respondents said they prefer domestic investment to overseas investment, a preference that is broadly consistent with the Japanese government's growth strategy. A machinery manufacturing company