Latest / Best of Business / Andrew Fairgray: 2degrees Chief Business Officer on the research showing the impact of AI use on SMEs

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Andrew Fairgray: 2degrees Chief Business Officer on the research showing the impact of AI use on SMEs · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: What effect is AI having on our business landscape? Two
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  Speaker 2: Degrees have been doing some work and we find that
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  Speaker 2: SAME's using high levels of AI made around four hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand dollars more a year. Larger business as average fifty
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  Speaker 2: nine million more. Eighty two percent now use some form
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  Speaker 2: of AI. Andrew Fairgray is the Two Degrees Chief business
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  Speaker 2: Officer and is with us. Andrew Morning to you, Morning, Mike.
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  Speaker 2: Going into this, did you have any sense of what
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  Speaker 2: you would find.
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  Speaker 3: No, we first did this report last year. I'm looking
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  Speaker 3: at productivity and we thought that west the way AI
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  Speaker 3: has been rolling out in the speed of adoption of
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  Speaker 3: would be good to this year add an adoption index.
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  Speaker 3: It was pleasing to see what the uptake was, but
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  Speaker 3: it's also quite heartening to see you the returns. As
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  Speaker 3: you mentioned on the introduction smeeze are seeing close to
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  Speaker 3: four and a half percent revenue increases those that are
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  Speaker 3: using AI, and larger businesses to seven percent.
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  Speaker 2: Does adoption vary widely between small, medium, and large?
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  Speaker 3: It does so. While eighty percent of businesses say that
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  Speaker 3: they're using it in some level. The actual index show
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  Speaker 3: that large businesses or enterprises are on average about forty
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  Speaker 3: seven percent and SMEE is about thirty three percent, which
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  Speaker 3: isn't surprising. It's pretty consistent to how businesses adopt new
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  Speaker 3: technology just from a time and skill and resources they
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  Speaker 3: have available.
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  Speaker 2: And are they using it for administration or creative or
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  Speaker 2: both or what generally?
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  Speaker 3: Generally we're starting to see it be used for all
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  Speaker 3: those things. The people that are getting the best outcome
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  Speaker 3: are being rarely disciplined and going deep, so they're not
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  Speaker 3: looking at just redesigning an existing workflow with how they
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  Speaker 3: did it yesterday, for stepping back and going what do
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  Speaker 3: we need to do going forward? And how can we
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  Speaker 3: leverage this as an enabler?
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  Speaker 2: Do they understand it? Because I don't understand it. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I understand what it is, but I don't I couldn't
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  Speaker 2: begin to tell you what it potentially can do and
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  Speaker 2: therefore how much money I'd spend on it and what
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  Speaker 2: I'm expecting from it.
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  Speaker 3: It's probably one of the interesting things that I think
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  Speaker 3: we can all learn from. In the Productivity report saying
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  Speaker 3: about New Zealand isn't cyclical with its productivity. We need
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  Speaker 3: a structural change and AI could be one of those leavers.
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  Speaker 3: And everyone is in the same place, so AI is
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  Speaker 3: not going to get any worse than what it is today.
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  Speaker 3: But globally, everyone's in the same place, so we're all learning.
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  Speaker 3: It's just a matter of having to go and trying it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: See, the great debate you would understand on the markets
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  Speaker 2: is that the amount of money being spent on AI
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  Speaker 2: and its potential is astonishing. Is that, in a smaller
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  Speaker 2: way happening in business. In other words, they're taking a
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  Speaker 2: punt on the spend to get the return.
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  Speaker 3: In larger businesses, yes, probably not yet so much in
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  Speaker 3: smaller businesses, just trying to understand what the real outcome is.
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  Speaker 3: Probably this calendar year, the benefit of AI has become
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  Speaker 3: a lot clearer and people are starting to see that,
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  Speaker 3: and that's one of the reasons why we share this.
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  Speaker 3: We think storytelling is going to be critically important to
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  Speaker 3: supporting New Zealand businesses as they grow, so we've worked
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  Speaker 3: with business chambers throughout New Zealand. We think that leveraging
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  Speaker 3: and helping support businesses learn and grow is critically important.
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  Speaker 2: Jure, what about the jobs do they does all this
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  Speaker 2: coming at the expensive jobs?
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  Speaker 3: I think we will redefine jobs and that's probably in
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  Speaker 3: our critical thing is an industrial revolutions t excuse me,
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  Speaker 3: have happened many times throughout history, and new jobs will form,
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  Speaker 3: no doubt, it will take away some mundane jobs, but
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  Speaker 3: it'll also create new jobs.
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  Speaker 2: Good stuff, all right, Andrew, appreciate the insight. Andrew Fairgray,
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  Speaker 2: who's the two Degrees Chief Business Officer.
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