NEW YORK - Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is advancing faster than many think. And a recent study proved as much after garnering some key insights into how more than 90 leading companies in 15 different industries are using AI.

The study, completed by A.T. Kearney, includes more than 100 distinct use cases. In each case, we tracked the type of AI technology employed by the company, how the AI solution was developed, its current stage of development, where in the value chain AI is being applied, and the objective the company is pursuing by using AI.

Roughly 37 percent of the use cases documented in our scan show AI being implemented at scale and delivering meaningful benefits. On average, these companies report a 15 to 30 percent return on investment within two years. Another 49 percent of the use cases examined were in the prototype and production phases, suggesting that AI applications are poised for substantial near-term growth (see Figure 1).

We found AI being applied for four main purposes:

- Performance improvement focuses on optimizing processes and worker productivity and improving supply and demand forecasting.

- Customer experience includes health and personal data monitoring to improve consumer decision making, as well as personalization of the customer journey or product offering.

- Value generation uses AI to help companies identify new streams of company revenue, either through new product identification or new channel offerings.

- Cost management includes predictive maintenance and identifying outliers that may be causing production disruptions or product defects.

Applying AI in pursuit of performance improvement accounts for nearly half of the use cases acr