AutoML as Facilitator of AI Adoption in SMEs: An Analysis of AutoML Use Cases

While the uptake of AI and ML has been rising in recent years, SMEs still face various adoption challenges. In contrast to large enterprises, SMEs struggle to adopt AI as already the identification of suitable AI use cases requires substantial technical expertise. At the same time, productivity tools like AutoML promise easy access to AI capabilities to non-experts. This research-in-progress aims to investigate how AutoML tools can be utilised to facilitate the adoption of AI in SMEs. In a focus group with 11 representatives from SMEs, we identified and discussed potential AutoML use cases in detail. Results show that the identification of potential use cases rarely focused on existing and available data but rather repeated known use cases and success stories from large enterprises. We argue that a paradigm shift towards a data-centric approach would be beneficial to exhaust the capabilities of AutoML for SMEs.