Most South Africans (89%) believe businesses would make more progress toward sustainability and social goals with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a new study by Oracle and Pamela Rucker, CIO Advisor and Instructor for Harvard Professional Development.
The study of more than 11,000 consumers and business leaders across 15 countries found that South Africans now want businesses to turn talk into action. They also believe technology can help organisations succeed where people have failed, with 60% of respondents even believing that bots will succeed where humans have failed.
“Our study reveals that the events of the past two years have put a spotlight on sustainability and social efforts, with South Africans now fed up with the lack of progress and calling for businesses to step up,” says Juergen Lindner, senior vice president and CMO, Global Marketing SaaS, Oracle.
“The majority of business leaders (97%) admit human bias and emotion often distract from the end goal, and 92% believe organisations that use technology to help drive sustainable business practices will be the ones that succeed in the long run.”
Oracle’s study reveals that nearly all business leaders would trust a bot over a human to make sustainability and social decisions. They believe bots are better at collecting different types of data without error (60%), making rational, unbiased decisions (50%), and predicting future outcomes based on metrics/past performance (54%).
“It’s never been more critical for businesses to invest in sustainability initiatives, as people don’t just to hear about it – they’re looking for decisive action and are demanding more transparency and tangible results. Thankfully, Oracle provides solutions covering all aspects of the nexus of IT and sustainable business practices, hardware, technology and applications, from cloud data centres to business intelligence to smart utility grids,” adds Lindner.
Oracle says its solutions can eliminate all obstacles to sustainability efforts, and they’re available to help organisations achieve environmental performance improvement while creating business value.
