50% of Domestic Companies Report "Lack of AI Specialists"

Industrial Research Institute "Need for Professional Workforce Development Policy... Expansion of R&D Support and Enhancement of Investment Incentives Required"

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] The difficulty in securing skilled personnel was cited as the main reason why domestic companies find it hard to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations. It has been pointed out that the government should take policy measures to cultivate skilled personnel, expand support for research and development, and enhance investment incentives to promote AI adoption by companies.

According to the "Survey on the Actual Use of AI by Companies" released by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade on the 3rd, among 283 companies surveyed, the biggest challenge in adopting and utilizing AI was the difficulty in hiring personnel with the appropriate technology, accounting for 53%.

Next were securing funds for AI use (32.2%), lack of technical elements (25.1%), and training existing employees (16.6%). Other challenges included lack of demand, insufficient learning data, and difficulties in technology implementation.

Due to these reasons, AI adoption by companies remains sluggish. Among 13,255 domestic companies surveyed in the 2019 Business Activity Survey conducted by Statistics Korea, only 409 had adopted AI.

For companies that have already adopted AI, AI investment and expenditure in 2019 were 8.46235 billion KRW and 5.07924 billion KRW respectively, showing increases of 84.2% and 476% compared to the previous year.

The proportion of companies investing more than 100 million KRW in AI rose from 48.2% in 2018 to 56.3% in 2019, and the proportion of companies purchasing AI worth more than 100 million KRW increased from 23.3% to 31.4% during the same period. The share of departments utilizing AI services also grew from 26.1% to 36.3%.

AI application areas were diverse, including automated operations, forecasting and predictive analysis, product and service development, and sales and logistics management. The average number of personnel involved in data-related tasks was 24.5, of which 16.8 were experts with a master's degree or higher. Particularly, the manufacturing industry and professional, scientific, and technical services sectors had a high proportion of personnel with master's degrees or higher.

The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade suggested that policy support for cultivating skilled personnel is urgently needed to activate AI adoption by companies.

An official from the institute said, "Cultivating experts with master's degrees or higher is key, and it is essential to complement and expand talent development policies in software and model development fields," adding, "To improve companies' internal environments, it is also necessary to alleviate the financial burden required for AI adoption and utilization and to expand support for research and development and utilization projects."

Additionally, expanding facility investment, tax support, and full public data disclosure were cited as conditions for expanding AI adoption by companies.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.