The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming businesses, moving from a buzzword to a daily necessity for accelerated growth. A recent IDC white paper, sponsored by AMD, highlights how AI PCs are driving a significant PC upgrade cycle, prompting businesses to adopt PCs with integrated neural processing units (NPUs) for local AI task processing.
This white paper draws on a November 2024 survey of 670 IT decision-makers (ITDMs) from large companies (500+ employees) globally. The survey included a significant number of managers (or higher) from large corporations (5,000+ employees) across diverse industries, including design and manufacturing, finance, and telecommunications.
A significant 73% of surveyed businesses reported that the emergence of AI PCs in recent years has substantially impacted their upgrade plans, accelerating the need for new PC hardware. Many of these companies (58%) still operate on Windows 10, further emphasizing the urgency to upgrade given its impending end-of-life and associated security risks. Encouragingly, 60% of these Windows 10 users plan to upgrade to Windows 11 AI PCs supporting Copilot+.
Data on the various uses of AI in an enterprise setting.
The surveyed businesses already leverage AI in their operations, with 95% using or testing AI in the cloud. AI applications are widespread, including predictive maintenance in manufacturing, AI-driven recommendations in retail, fraud detection in finance, and AI-enhanced diagnostics in healthcare. As the chart illustrates, employees utilize AI for various tasks like document summarization, content creation, and automation.
Businesses recognize the numerous benefits of AI. Decision-makers cited personalized user experiences (77%), enhanced data privacy (75%), and improved security (74%) as key advantages.
Furthermore, 82% of respondents anticipate a positive impact of AI on their workforce. They expect AI to eliminate repetitive tasks (83%), enable employees to focus on critical tasks (79%), and boost productivity (76%).
However, businesses acknowledge the challenges of AI adoption. Data privacy concerns (36%), security risks (26%), high costs (31%), and regulatory compliance (25%) are among the top obstacles. AI PCs, which process data locally, offer a potential solution to mitigate some of these cloud-based risks.
AMD plays a crucial role in developing AI PCs, collaborating with OEMs like Dell, HP, and Lenovo to integrate AI directly into their systems. AMD also focuses on software optimization to ensure compatibility between AMD-based PCs and popular AI applications.
This survey underscores the growing importance of AI PCs in the business landscape. With the end-of-life for Windows 10 approaching, AI PC adoption is expected to accelerate significantly in the coming year.
