EMEA Execs Lack Visibility into AI Dependencies, Raising Concerns

IBM's latest research has shed light on the growing concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) in European businesses. According to the study, conducted by IBM's Institute for Business Value in partnership with Oxford Economics, nearly 90% of executives in EMEA do not fully understand their organizations' dependencies across AI vendors, models, and infrastructure.

This lack of visibility is becoming a major concern as enterprises move from isolated AI projects to broader deployments involving AI agents capable of making decisions and taking actions with limited human intervention. The report notes that only 9% of the 1,000 executives surveyed globally believe they have an excellent understanding of their AI dependencies.

Executives expect AI to play a much larger role in business decisions over the coming years, with CEOs stating that AI currently influences about a quarter of operational decisions. However, this is expected to rise to nearly half by 2030.

The cost of not knowing is high, with unpredictable costs arising from misaligned AI workloads and mismatches between data storage and processing locations. In EMEA, executives warn that even a short outage at a primary AI provider could have severe consequences for business operations.