(Yicai) March 27 -- The vast majority of businesses are deeply disappointed by their investments in artificial intelligence, according to the findings of a survey conducted by global management and strategy consultants Roland Berger.

Ninety percent of the 200 companies Germany-based Roland Berger surveyed last December were unhappy with their AI investments, Denis Depoux, its global managing director, said yesterday at the annual Boao Forum for Asia in China’s southern Hainan province.

With the world going “all in on AI,” companies are afraid of missing out and are spending lavishly on developing models and building data architecture, but the returns have not materialized as expected, Depoux said. Nearly two-thirds still lack a unified AI strategy, measuring success too narrowly and focusing on the technology itself rather than on its overall value, he said.

Depoux cited data showing that generative AI can lift customer-support productivity by 40 percent and software-development productivity by 60 percent. The companies seeing real gains, he said, are the ones that redesigned their entire business process and embedded AI deeply into it.

Successful AI transformation must be built on proprietary data, supported by controllable information technology systems, cloud architecture, cloud databases, and structured data, Depoux noted. In manufacturing, he added, it is necessary to make sure that front-line staff properly understand the value of the data.

Other participants at the forum said that a true AI transformation is based on a deep understanding of a firm’s business, autonomous control of data, and vertical exploration of application scenarios.

AI has helped to create the “tailored education” that humans have been pursuing for over 2,000 years, said Cheng Qun, vice president of online tutoring platform Yuanli Technology.

“In Chaoyang district in Beijing and Longgang district in Shenzhen, tens of thousands of students now are given homework that is specifically tailored to each individual,” he said. “Each student gets one copy, which has different exercises.”

Beijing-based Yuanli keeps records of students’ homework and learning data and combines it with AI for precise analysis, making tailored homework possible, he pointed out.

AI has significantly lowered the barriers for firms to enter new markets, said Qiu Han, senior vice president of PayPal and its China chief executive. It used to take Chinese vendors months or even years to prepare to enter a new market, as they needed to overcome obstacles such as language, culture, and logistics. Now, with the help of AI, this process has been shortened to “weeks or days,” he said.

Editor: Tom Litting