Australian businesses need to dramatically lift their investment in Artificial Intelligence technology if they are to keep up with their US counterparts, says the Australian boss of Google boss.

“About 8 per cent of Australian-listed companies are actively investing in AI and machine-learning technology,” said Google’s local boss Jason Pellegrino.

“That compares to about 20 per cent of listed companies in the US.

The need to speed up AI investment could be an opportunity for ASX-listed companies that provide the technology.

Artificial intelligence is a highly specialised branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines with human-like powers such as problem solving, learning and perception

There are at least 25 ASX stocks that offer exposure to AI — although the number could be higher depending on your definition of Artificial Intelligence.

AI stocks come in a wide variety of flavours. Earlier this week we published research by Morgan Stanley that suggests there are three basic types of AI stocks to invest in: providers of core technology, app makers and service providers.

Scroll down for a table of ASX-listed artificial Intelligence stocks and their recent performance.

“From a Google perspective, we came out about two years ago with a fairly bold statement to say that we are going to be… an AI-driven company,” Mr Pellegrino told Businss Insider this week.

“What that means is that every product we build, every way we think about engaging with consumers… is going to be built upon a spine of artificial intelligence and machine learning particularly.”

Quoting research by AlphaBeta, Mr Pellegrino said: “Over the next 15 years there’s about $2.2 trillion of economic growth available for Australia through automation — that’s an enormous figure.

“And our ability to capture that will [largely] determine the future prosperity for Australia”.

Australian success in doing that relied on two things:

Google Australia MD Jason Pellegrino.
Google Australia MD Jason Pellegrino.

“First of which we need to make sure everyone is skilled. The human capital that has the skills to meet the needs of these future technologies of automation.

“Your job… is most likely going to exist in 15 years time but the way you go about doing that is going to be very, very different.”

The second piece of the puzzle was “we need to speed up”.

“We need to double our pace of adoption in order to capture this economic growth.

“And we’re in a global economy now, so the implications of not speeding that up… is missing out completely”.

His comments follow the launch of a slew of new futuristic features on Google Lens including a tool that will let users “Shazam” the world in real-time on a smartphone’s camera.

Here is a selection of ASX-listed stocks offering exposure to Artificial Intelligence — and their recent performance.

ASX code Company Market Cap
4DS 4DS MEMORY 53.9M
ALC ALCIDION GROUP 32.2M
BID BIDENERGY 30.4M
BRC BRAIN RESOURCES 20.7M
BRN BRAINCHIP 145.4M
BTC BTC HEALTH 24.1M
CAJ CAPITOL HEALTH 233.7M
CGS COGSTATE 93.2M
CMP COMPUMEDICS 75.3M
CM8 CROWD MOBILE 16.1M
FGO FLAMINGO AI 55.6M
IPD IMPEDIMED 191.0M
LBT LBT INNOVATIONS 26.1M
LNU LINIUS TECHNOLOGY 73.0M
M7T MACH7 TECHNOLOGIES 31.0M
MDR MEDADVISOR 59.3M
MEB MEDIBIO 38.5M
ONE ONEVIEW HEAL 127.0M
OPN OPENDNA 6.2M
RAP RESAPP HEALTH 95.6M
RHT RESONANCE HEALTH 9.7M
SP3 SPECTUR 16.2M
UTR ULTRACHARGE 19.5M
VHT VOLPARA HEALTH 19.5M
WBT WEEBIT NANO 90.9M
WHK WHITEHAWK (floated Jan 22) 5.9M
YOJ YOJEE 111.3M
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This article first appeared on Business Insider Australia, Australia’s most popular business news website. Read the original article. Follow Business Insider on Facebook or Twitter.