World spending on artificial intelligence technologies will grow by almost five times in the coming years, predicts the analyst company International Data Corporation (IDC).

Experts expect that in 2017, the world market of cognitive systems and solutions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) will amount to $ 12 billion, an increase of almost 60% compared with last year. In 2021, the figure will reach $ 57.6 billion, and the average annual growth rate will exceed 50%.

"Solutions in the field of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence continue to spread throughout the market, providing significant growth opportunities," comments Marianne Daquila, research manager at IDC's Customer Insights and Analysis division,. - Some of the use scenarios are very specific to a particular industry, such as diagnosis and treatment in health care. In other markets, you can find automated services for customer service ".

Most often artificial intelligence will be used in quality management systems and making recommendations, diagnostic and treatment systems, automated customer support services, automated systems for intelligence and threat prevention, as well as in the analysis of cyber fraud and investigations. These five regions will account for about half of world spending in AI and cognitive decisions in 2017, the IDC.

The largest AI investments in the current year are expected in retail trade ($ 1.74 billion) and the banking sector ($ 1.72 billion). In areas such as discrete manufacturing, medicine and continuous production, spending will exceed $ 1 billion each.

More than half of the costs for cognitive and AI technologies from 2017 to 2021 will be in software, including cognitive platforms that provide tools and technologies for analyzing, organizing, accessing and advising services on the basis of structured and unstructured information.

At the same time, the highest growth rate (about 54% per year) will be demonstrated by the service direction. The equipment will take a small share of the market in question, although it will demonstrate an annual growth of 40.4%, experts predict..