New Delhi, May 19 (IANS): Seven out of 10 IT professionals in India think that the lack of a strategy is the largest barrier companies face in developing explainable and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), a new report said on Thursday.

Another greatest barrier to successful AI adoption is limited skills, expertise or knowledge (38 per cent) for organisations exploring or deploying AI in the country.

"As the adoption of AI grows steadily, organisations in India are using AI to augment their core business processes and services to better serve their clients, employees, and important stakeholders," said Siddhesh Naik, Data, AI & Automation Sales Leader, IBM Technology Sales, IBM India South Asia.

The report saw three trends clearly emerging in India.

First, automation use cases are at the forefront of AI adoption as businesses are using AI to stay competitive and operate more efficiently.

"Second, effective data management and AI deployment go hand in hand because without the right tools, it is difficult to leverage data across their business. And third, it is critical to ensure trust in AI by explaining how the AI arrived at a decision," informed Naik.

While 57 per cent of IT professionals in India said that their organisation has actively deployed AI in their business, over a quarter (27 per cent) indicate that their organisation is exploring the use of AI.

Over 50 per cent of IT professionals in India at companies exploring or deploying AI say their organisation plans to invest in research and development (56 per cent), building proprietary AI solutions (54 per cent), and reskilling and workforce development (52 per cent) in the next year.

The IT professionals in India are in near unanimous agreement that it is important to their company that they can build and run AI projects wherever their data resides.

More than 3 in 4 IT professionals in India (78 per cent) said that at least a quarter of the workforce at their company requires access to company data to make decisions.

A majority of IT professionals in India (93 per cent) agreed that being able to explain how their AI arrived at a decision is important to their company.

Globally, the AI adoption was up 4 percentage points compared with 2021.