Thanks to a freshly completed study by TECHnalysis Research on the usage of AI applications in US businesses based on a survey of 504 IT professionals working in medium (100-999 employees) and large (1,000 employees) companies that are currently doing some type of AI work, the perspective that appears is pragmatic. Companies want to use AI-based applications to improve their overall efficiency, across a number of different areas. The hope is that AI-based tools can reduce some of the more tedious, repetitive tasks that can slow organizations down--or that some simply choose not to do because they're so challenging to maintain. In addition, companies of various sizes and types believe that AI-based applications can speed up or help automate many of these tasks. Whether it's automatically filtering spam and phishing attacks from email; analyzing files or other data as they're opened, created or passed along; or acting as a perimeter shield on networks and examining the packets that travel across them; the realistic benefits of many AI-based or AI-enhanced applications are proving to be attractive to nearly 1-in-5 US companies with at least 100 employees.