2025/13 | LEM Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||||||
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Decoding AI: Nine facts about how firms use artificial intelligence in France |
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Flavio Calvino and Luca Fontanelli |
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Keywords | |||||||||||||||||
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Technology Diffusion, Artificial Intelligence, Business Function, ICT
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JEL Classifications | |||||||||||||||||
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O14, O33
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Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
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This study explores how French firms use artificial intelligence,
leveraging a uniquely detailed and representative dataset with
information on the use of specific AI technologies and how AI systems
are deployed across different business functions within firms, in 2020
and 2022. The use of AI is still rare, amounting to 6% of firms, and
varies by technology, with sectors often specialising in specific
technologies and functions. While most firms specialise in a single AI
technology applied to a single business function, larger firms adopt
multiple technologies for different purposes. Firms adopting AI
technologies are generally larger - except for those using natural
language-related AI - and tend to be more digitally intensive, though
firms leveraging NLG and autonomous movement AI deviate from this
pattern. Firm size appears a relevant driver of AI use in business
functions requiring integration with tangible processes, while digital
capabilities appear particularly relevant for AI applications in
business functions more related to intangible ones. AI technologies
widely differ in terms of technological interdependencies and
applicability, with machine learning for data analysis, automation and
data-driven decision making-related AI technologies resulting as being
at the core of the AI paradigm.
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