The adoption of artificial intelligence-based technologies by large enterprises has jumped by more than 270 percent in the last four years, according to a new Gartner Inc. survey.

Gartner added that in the last year alone, AI adoption has more than tripled. It says about 37 percent of enterprises have now implemented AI in one way or another.

Released today, Gartner’s 2019 CIO Survey is based on the responses from more than 3,000 executives across a wide range of industries. It reveals AI is being used in a wide range of applications, including automated big data analysis, cognitive computing, image recognition, machine learning and natural language processing.

The findings are a stark contrast to Gartner’s previous claims last summer that just 4 percent of enterprises had implemented AI in production.

“If you are a CIO and your organization doesn’t use AI, chances are high that your competitors do and this should be a concern,” Chris Howard, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. “We still remain far from general AI that can wholly take over complex tasks, but we have now entered the realm of AI-augmented work and decision science — what we call ‘augmented intelligence.'”

Gartner says AI is becoming so pervasive that it will become an integral part of enterprises’ future strategies in virtually every industry.

Still, some industries are further ahead than others. For example, 52 percent of telecommunications companies are already using AI-powered chatbots to power customer services. An additional 49 percent of all enterprises are said to have altered their business models to integrate new AI processes in their business operations.

For all that, integrating AI isn’t as easy as those numbers suggest. Gartner warns that enterprises are also facing up to an AI talent skills shortage that it says won’t be resolved until the technology matures.

The survey results also indicate that AI is having less of an impact on employment figures than many have feared. Just 8 percent of Global 2000 companies have reported cutting jobs following the integration of AI, robots and automation. Moreover, the rest of these enterprises said AI is actually helping them to create new job opportunities.

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