IT
PRESS RELEASE
The 6th Business and Labour Survey involving 30 thousand companies was presented
WORK, INAPP: ‘ONLY 2% OF SME INVEST IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE’
Artificial intelligence does not reduce labour demand, instead, it stimulates it when investment is also made in Big Data and Robotics (+0.7%)
FADDA: ‘While in Italy we’re still debating between ‘apocalyptic and integrated’ AI, our main competitors are convincingly investing in this area, which is destined to improve production processes and work organisation. To date, the first gap that characterises SMEs is undoubtedly the lack of understanding and skills in this regard; they know that Artificial Intelligence exists but still do not know how to use it to improve their performance. For many, it is a question of starting from the very basics, namely digital transformation and the use of ‘big data’.
Rome, 14 September 2023 – for Italian companies, AI still remains unknown. Despite ongoing debates and its potential, AI is still scarcely used by Italian companies, especially smaller ones: only 2% of our SMEs with at least 10 employees claim to have invested in IT between 2019 and 2021. This percentage rises to 10% if we consider the investment in AI together with that made in the technology that is the prerequisite for its adoption, i.e. Big Data. This is what emerged during the proceedings of the workshop ‘Ecological and Digital Transition, Labour Policies and Business’ organised by INAPP (National Institute for Public Policy Analysis) in which the new data of the VI Rilevazione Imprese e Lavoro (RIL), conducted in 2022 on a representative sample of about 30,000 Italian companies, were presented. These findings change significantly according to company size, geographical location and sector of activity. The share of AI adoption varies from 1.5% in small companies (with less than 50 employees) to 12% in those with more than 250 employees, from 7% in high-tech services to 1.2% in less skilled services.
The results of RIL, a research project developed by the Enterprise and Employment Structure coordinated by Andrea Ricci, suggest that the spread of AI, with all that it entails, is not only in its infancy but also reflects a strong complementarity with other digital technologies and thus a substantial heterogeneity in our entrepreneurial system, confirming the urgency of governing this change to prevent it from further accelerating the productive and competitive inequalities in our economies.
Prof. Sebastiano Fadda states ‘’while in Italy we’re still debating between ‘apocalyptic and integrated’ AI, our main competitors are convincingly investing in this area, bound to improve production processes and work organisation. To date, the first gap that characterises SMEs is undoubtedly the lack of understanding and skills in this regard; they know that Artificial Intelligence exists but still do not know how to use it to improve their performance. For many, it is a question of starting from the very basics, namely digital transformation and the use of ‘big data’. The link between investing in training and in adjacent technologies required for the development and application of AI should defeat the fear of job loss due to the uptake of AI.
This is precisely the second piece of evidence highlighted by the survey. The analysis shows that investment in AI by itself does not produce any significant effect on labour demand, whereas when it is made in addition to investment in Big Data and Robotics, it is correlated with a slight increase (+0.7%) in the share of jobs in demand. AI is indeed associated with a strong increase in business-funded expenditure on vocational training, even when we examine AI in the absence of other technologies (+13%). This supports the hypothesis that – at least for now – the transformation of AI is proceeding more within companies (of their reorganisation processes) than in the ‘market’.
‘For this reason, a strategic vision to accelerate and boost business investment, strengthen digital skills from school to the workplace, and gain greater awareness and knowledge of the potential of AI is paramount’ concluded the INAPP president. ‘But the realisation of an organic strategy requires a coherent systematisation of incentives and strong coordination with the structural change policies of our production system. The National Recovery Plan contains more than one encouraging sign in this direction, but a great effort is needed to implement it’.
For more information:
Giancarlo Salemi – INAPP President Spokesperson (347 6312823)
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