New research reveals that AI is already inside your business, you just don’t realise it

Despite around 80% of UK businesses believing that AI is irrelevant to their operations, most of them are already using it.

If a business is using automated software, data analytics or smart platforms, then AI is already embedded within its systems, something that too many companies just don’t recognise.

This was a key finding of a newly released report, AI in practice, published this week by Top 50 law firm HCR Law and CyNam, the successful regional cybercluster which connects cyber, tech and innovation organisations across Gloucestershire and beyond.

The research revealed that only 17% of adults can explain what AI is, and just 11% of workers receive adequate training to use it safely and effectively.

The report is based on a year’s worth of research across the UK undertaken by HCR Law and CyNam, including roundtables, surveys and one-to-one discussions with professionals in sectors such as healthcare, financial services, agriculture, education and others – people whose daily work couldn’t be more different.

All are asking similar questions: What is AI? Should we be using it? How can we apply it to our advantage? And what might happen if we ignore it?

While those participating in the research were not primarily worried about superintelligent machines, some in the healthcare sector expressed their concern about AI giving confident but wrong outputs in clinical decision-making (often referred to as AI hallucination). Others highlighted their concerns about such issues as AI recruitment tools quietly discriminating against underrepresented applicants or information given by open-source models (such as the free version of ChatGPT and others), with their safety controls removed.

The potential loss of skills, which could be replaced by AI, was also a major worry.

Despite all these concerns, everyone wants to know more about how AI could make a genuine difference to their business – and give them a competitive edge.

Frank Jennings, Partner in the Technology and Innovation team at HCR Law, who chaired the four roundtables said: “AI isn’t coming – it’s already here, embedded in the software, analytics and platforms businesses use every day. The problem is that many organisations don’t recognise or endorse it, which means they can’t govern it.”

The picture that has emerged from HCR Law and CyNam’s Everyday AI Forum series, which formed a significant part of the report’s research, paints a clear pattern: AI adoption is patchy, clustered in specific functions, and driven by enthusiastic individuals rather than coherent organisational strategy.

What was also evident was how AI is being used in different areas of business, the level of governance and the specific barriers each sector had to overcome.

In the financial service sector, particularly in fraud detection, AI-driven systems have significantly reduced false positives, allowing human investigators to focus on genuinely suspicious activity. In the lending sector, AI is enabling institutions to analyse a broader range of data, resulting in faster and more accurate decisions.

In education, the research found that AI is often being adopted faster – and less predictably than institutional frameworks can currently accommodation.

Students are often more proficient with AI tools than their teachers, which creates a particular challenge – schools are expected to integrate AI into the curriculum at the same time as managing the risk that students will use it to complete assessed work rather than learn.

One of the sectors where AI applications are already delivering measurable value is, perhaps surprisingly, agriculture.

Wearable sensors using machine learning monitor a cow’s temperature, movement, eating habits and rumination patterns, which can signal illness hours or days before visible symptoms appear. Robotic milking is used by many dairy farmers, and overhead cameras using AI can provide consistent monitoring of livestock that manual observation can’t match at scale.

AI is creating a skills divide as well as a jobs divide, the research revealed. This matters behind its direct economic impact. Entry-level roles are where people develop the practical knowledge, judgement and competence that can’t be acquired solely through formal training.

Frank Jennings said: “The biggest mistake we see is organisations asking ‘how do we adopt AI?’ when they should be asking ‘what problem are we actually trying to solve?’

“Technology can provide the answer – but only once you’ve properly understood the question.”

AI adoption must be guided by principles that actively mitigate risks, the research concludes, and AI systems must remain subject to meaningful human oversight. This isn’t simply a matter of having a human in the loop, as rubber-stamping AI outputs without genuine review, is not oversight.

And those who are affected by AI decisions should know that AI is involved – and organisations should be able to explain how those decisions have been reached.

Hollie Wakefield is General Manager of CyNam. She said: “This programme highlighted that the opportunities and challenges presented by AI adoption are complex and far-reaching. It’s not just about understanding the technology, but about taking a problem-first approach, defining risk appetite, and putting the right structures in place to support its responsible use.

“Bringing people together from across sectors to explore these themes sits at the heart of CyNam’s mission to connect people around technology to solve some of society’s biggest technological challenges. We’re grateful to partners like HCR Law for contributing their expertise and helping to shape these conversations.”

Frank added: “The AI adoption gap is real, and the stakes are high. If you can’t identify the AI in use in your business, you can’t govern it, you can’t assess whether it’s working, and you can’t act responsibly towards the people it affects. In the meantime, your competitors who implement AI effectively will be gaining an advantage.

“AI literacy isn’t a technical nice-to-have – it’s a core organisational capability that must be built deliberately and maintained over time.”

The full report, published by HCR Law and CyNam, is available to download here.