Global artificial intelligence (AI) platform revenue will reach $52bn by 2024, up from $28bn in 2019 as spending on AI will rise as businesses seek to accelerate digital transformation and development, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Thematic Research: Artificial Intelligence’, states that the next few years will see AI providers focus on delivering tangible benefits to clients and dialing back on the hype that has threatened to overwhelm the industry. Practical uses of AI will be front and center, as businesses ensure they get their money’s worth by using AI to address specific problems.

Nicklas Nilsson, Senior Analyst for Thematic Research at GlobalData, comments: “The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for AI adoption. According to GlobalData’s Global Emerging Technology Trends Survey 2020, more than three-quarters of companies believe AI has played a role in helping them survive the pandemic. The pandemic has also expedited AI research in federated learning, which allows for collaboration on models without disclosing sensitive information.”

As AI becomes more pervasive and embedded in life-changing decisions, the need for transparency has intensified. There have been plenty of high-profile cases in recent years where AI has contributed to bias and discrimination, with the use of facial recognition for policing just one example.

Nilsson continues: “There is a high probability of a shift from loose self-regulation to government involvement in AI over the next couple of years. In turn, Big Tech is increasingly using AI to solve the privacy and bias problems that the technology itself created. Explainable AI, which allows humans to understand the path a model took to make a decision, and synthetic data training, which circumvents the small data problem using artificially created data, are two ways AI is being used to develop trust.”