There is little doubt that COVID-19 has been the single most influential driver of our lives and livelihoods in 2020. The impact of the pandemic however has been very mixed for certain groups of society, certain industry sectors, certain companies and for certain technologies. Three key themes emerge around PwC’s Global Responsible AI survey, of over 1,000 C-level executives, conducted in November 2019. The survey respondents were across seven industry sectors (i.e., consumer markets; industrial manufacturing and automotive; financial services; technology, media, and telecoms; energy, utilities, and resources; health industries and government and public services) and company sizes varied from less than $500 million annual revenues (29% of respondents), between $500 million and $1 billion (23%) and greater than $1 billion (49%).
Large companies and AI Leaders have had a positive impact from COVID-19
Overall, 44% of surveyed companies had a limited or significant negative impact (44%) from COVID-19. Interestingly, an equal number of respondents felt that they had a limited or significant positive impact from COVID-19. However, differences emerge when we look at the size of the companies. Very large companies ($10 billion or greater) and very small companies ($50 million or under) have seen a significant positive impact from COVID-19: Nearly 39% of very large companies and 37% of very small companies had a significant positive impact from COVID-19.
When the companies are segmented by their AI maturity level three clusters emerge – AI Leaders (26%), AI Laggards (16%) and AI Experimenters (58%). Once again large companies ($1 billion or greater) make up 65% of the AI Leaders. This disproportionate number of AI leaders in the large company category are also seeing a significant to limited positive impact from COVID-19. These companies have also increased their use of AI (57% vs 34% overall), explored more new AI use cases (40% vs 34% overall), and investing more in AI development (48% vs 42% overall).

Energy, utilities and resources companies have increased their use of AI (45% vs 34% overall) and are also training more employees to use AI (40% vs 28% overall). Not surprisingly, of all the sectors healthcare industries are investing the most heavily in AI (52% vs 42% overall).

Companies that have operationalized AI have seen better ROI
Another key theme emerging from the survey is the level of AI model deployment made by companies and their ROI. Not surprisingly, 78% of AI leaders have 5 or more AI applications in operations compared to only 28% amongst the AI laggards and 52% overall across all three segments. Once again 29% of very large companies have 10 or more AI applications in operations compared to just 13% on average. Also, 43% of these companies have their processes fully enabled by AI with widespread Adoption compared to just 23% of the overall group. In a separate US based study (PwC’s AI Predictions 2021) nearly 86% of the respondents said that they are realizing the benefits from AI-based customer experiences and 64% from AI-based efficiency and productivity initiatives.

Centralized or coordinated strategies are paying off
Companies that are deploying AI models in production need to coordinate across multiple functional units and in some cases across multiple business units. This requires a more centralized AI function or at the very least a more coordinated AI function. Nearly 36% of AI Leaders, compared to just 19% of companies overall, have a centralized AI business and an investment strategy. Also 50% of AI leaders stated that the investment is coordinated at the organizational level compared to just 38% overall. For large company AI leaders, these percentages jump to 42% for centralized AI business and investment strategy and 54% for coordinated investments.


The centralized or coordinated investment strategy also meant that 74% of the AI Leaders (and 81% of large company AI leaders) felt that their AI initiatives were aligned with organizational values, compared to just 44% of the overall cohort. Compared to this nearly 39% of AI experimenters and 33% of AI laggards felt that they were unsure if the AI initiatives were aligned with their organizational values.


The consequences of these three insights are illuminating. AI leaders, typically large companies, had invested in AI before the pandemic. Given their AI readiness they were able to respond better than their competition during the uncertain COVID-19 period and as a result, were able to reap better ROI from their initiatives. This in turn has resulted in them planning on greater AI investments in 2021 and potentially reaping even more returns getting on to the virtuous AI-led ROI cycle.