By Iida Lähdemäki, COO, AI Finland
In brief
AI is spreading slowly in Finnish companies – only 24% used AI in 2024, even though its potential is widely recognised. Adoption grew on the previous year, but the pace is still leisurely.
The biggest obstacle is a lack of skills – companies report that AI expertise is not available in sufficient measure at any level: leadership, staff, or technical specialists. Fears and unrealistic expectations hold development back.
Three critical skill areas – a successful AI strategy requires strategic understanding from leadership, AI literacy across the whole workforce, and high-level technical expertise.
Generative AI democratises expertise – succeeding with AI is not necessarily about being the smartest but the most curious. Critical thinking and resilience take on new importance in the working life of the future.
AI Finland is training 1,000 management teams – the aim is to increase leadership expertise and create 1,000 new AI projects that boost Finland’s competitiveness and attract top talent.
Global AI development keeps accelerating, and high expectations rest on AI in the Finnish business landscape too. Even so, according to Statistics Finland, only 24% of Finnish companies used AI technologies last year. That was a rise of 9 percentage points on the previous year, but the pace of AI adoption in Finnish companies is considerably more leisurely than its potential would lead you to expect. Why is progress slower than we would like?
In workshops held in autumn 2024, AI Finland asked representatives of more than 200 companies what slows down the use of AI in their organisation. Regardless of sector and size, the answer was a lack of skills — and through it a lack of courage and realistic expectations, and in many cases fears and prejudices. The same finding has come up year after year in Silo AI’s Nordic State of AI studies: a lack of skills is one of the biggest obstacles to large-scale use of AI in organisations.
“A lack of skills” is a lazy phrase, though — what do we actually mean by skills in the context of AI? Who lacks them, who should have them, and which ones? As we went deeper into the discussions, three categories of skills started to recur, all of which play a central role in companies’ success on their AI journey:
Strategic understanding among senior leadership, including the board and owners
AI literacy and basic understanding across the workforce
Top-level technical AI expertise
Realising AI’s full potential begins with strategic understanding at leadership level. Leaders must be able to see through the AI noise and understand both AI’s possibilities and its realities in the context of their own business. Crucially, that understanding must not be limited to generative AI, because for many Finnish companies traditional AI technologies are still more relevant than large language models. Leadership also needs to understand that AI and the opportunities around it are not something to be outsourced to the IT department, but a driver of competitive advantage belonging at the core of business strategy.
From the perspective of workforce AI skills, the situation is worrying. Recent studies show that although Finland has excellent starting conditions for succeeding in the age of AI, we are already falling behind in the sustained use and bold application of it. For Finland’s competitiveness as a whole, it is decisive that citizens — and through them employees — have strong generative AI skills at scale. Generative AI is one of the most democratising technologies in history: the best at it are not the smartest or best educated but the most curious and interested. Anyone, then, can learn. The question is how we spark that broad interest and enthusiasm. As AI development continues to accelerate, the most important skills in the working life of the future will be resilience, flexibility, and critical thinking. A key question is how those skills, too, can be grown within organisations.
When it comes to top-level AI expertise, the good news is that by international standards Finland has high-quality AI research and researchers. To keep and attract talent in Finland and make use of their expertise in the Finnish business landscape, companies have to be able to offer them AI projects that are ambitious and interesting enough. Company boards and owners play a central role here — investment in the ambitious projects identified in an AI strategy is key to attracting talent.
AI Finland wants to do its part to remove the skills obstacle by growing the AI expertise of senior leadership in Finnish companies. Our ambitious goal is to train the management teams, boards, and owners of 1,000 companies to identify the most important needs and opportunities in their own business that can be solved with AI-based solutions. By increasing understanding among leadership, our aim is to create 1,000 new AI projects in Finland that attract expertise here and raise the skill level of existing employees too — and above all create that famous competitive advantage. Now is the time to make AI expertise a source of national pride. Read more about the AI1000 – Growth through AI programme here.
About the writer
Iida Lähdemäki (LinkedIn) is COO at AI Finland, a cross-sector business network whose aim is to accelerate the use of AI in the Finnish business landscape. Iida leads AI Finland’s AI skills working group and is responsible for, among other things, Nordic cooperation on advancing the use of AI.
Enjoyed this piece? Subscribe to get notified about new Tekoälyfoorumi articles straight to your inbox. We’d also hugely appreciate it if you left us a review on Google. Thank you. 💙
