Introduction

For the term ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’ Google searched 797 million results in 0.49 seconds. There were 2,590,000 hits in 0.14 seconds in the ‘Scientific paper’ category. The increases in scientific publications can be seen in Figure 7.1. The numbers prove the popularity of the topic.

Issues related to AI are addressed at different levels, but with many different approaches. Popularity of AI is not accidental as it is embedded in our daily lives and shapes our thinking and decisions in private and at work. But it poses a serious challenge to an organization's management systems as it is the driving force behind the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Brynjolfsson et al., 2018). International Data Corporation (IDC 2019) analyses that the global value of developments can reach $90 billion by 2023 (Chernov and Chernova 2019).

The contents of publications, studies, blogs and web pages about AI are almost untraceable and the possibilities of understanding and incorporating into an organization's everyday life depend on several factors. The most important of these is knowledge, coupled with trust and/or mistrust in technology and its safety. Another important factor is technical readiness (development), which determines the integration of AI into everyday practice in a broad range/gamut. The third, also influencing the former two, is financial conditions. Other factors can be listed, but the above are closely related, and they distinguish the situation of the countries presented in this study fundamentally from the practices of Western European, American and Asian countries. In the following, the study describes the situation and practice of the group formed in the heart of Central and Eastern Europe, the Visegrad Four.

AI and the Visegrad Four

Within the European Union (EU), the Visegrad Group (V4) is a regional organisation of four Central European member states – the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Their aim is to jointly represent the economic, diplomatic and political interests of these countries. The V4 was founded in Visegrad (Hungary) in 1991 to promote the development of the region. In 2004, they all joined the EU. These four countries account for more than a tenth of the EU's territory and population, contributing almost 6 per cent of the EU's economic performance in terms of GDP, around 8 per cent of car production, and almost 20 per cent of major crops.