Artificial Intelligence Activity in UK Businesses, 2021

The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport's (DCMS) Office for Artificial Intelligence commissioned research to model current and future estimates of (i) the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in the UK, and (ii) the expenditure on AI technologies and AI-related labour in the UK. The associated report provides an assessment of the scale of AI activity in UK businesses and scenarios for growth over the next twenty years. To gather data on AI adoption and spending to inform the modelling in this study, a survey of private businesses was conducted in conjunction with YouGov. The total survey sample was 2,019 private businesses, including 1,127 small businesses (55.8%), 291 medium businesses (14.4%) and 601 large businesses (29.8%). Respondents spanned all regions of Great Britain and all private sectors. Businesses in Northern Ireland have thus not been surveyed. After removing spurious responses, the identification process of which included an analysis of expenditure responses relative to firm size (in terms of turnover), the sample reduced to 2,009 quality responses.

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