Who’s actually using AI at work?
Image by This_is_Engineering from Pixabay
Nov. 1, 2024 — There’s a lot of talk lately about the over-hyping of AI.
The rise and fall of Super Micro, a vendor building out Nvidia-based clusters of servers for training and deploying AI models, is sending chills through investors. The company’s stock, once valued at $70 billion, plunged 33% on Wednesday and fell another 12% on Thursday. Super Micro’s auditor, Ernst & Young, quit the account and said it was disavowing the company’s financial statements. That’s never a good sign.
Meanwhile, veteran investor Jeremy Grantham opined that the current AI enthusiasm reminded him of the early dot-com bubble. Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently expressed his skepticism at an open-source conference:
“I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position and it’s 90 percent marketing and ten percent reality and in five years things will change and at that point we’ll see what of the AI is getting used for real workloads,” he said. OpenAI’s ChatGPT “makes great demonstrations and it’s obviously being used in many areas, for graphic design and things like that, but I really hate the hype cycle.”
With all this investor-driven hype, fear, and over-valuation, it’s worth asking: Is AI actually being adopted and used?
Who’s using AI and who’s not
We saw two answers to that question this past week.
In the Washington Post, reporter Danielle Abril talked with a handful of workers who have embraced AI tools and become early-adopting super users. They include a VP at a corporate training company who uses AI to create content, prepare for conversations, help with project planning, and determine impact.
“A growing number of workers are becoming “super users” of AI,” wrote Abril. “They turn to the tech daily to learn skills, analyze large sets of data, review job candidates and even program other bots to help them with repetitive tasks, such as building online courses. Workers say AI tools — such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and other chatbots powered by large language models — help them boost efficiency and confidence at work and reclaim hours of time. But those familiar with the technology say they also worry about privacy, inaccuracies, the loss of skills and even the potential of job replacement in the future.”
To be clear: That “growing number” means the number of workers using AI is increasing—but it’s still relatively small. A recent Gallup survey found that 4% of workers use AI for work on a daily basis, while 67% say they never use it on the job.
companies may be moving faster than workers
At business-and-AI conferences this past year there’s been a common refrain from executives bold enough to tell the truth: Although they don’t know nearly enough about the opportunities and risks of AI, they feel pressured to adopt the technology lest they be seen as out of touch.
A CNBC business survey released earlier this week bears that out. Roughly two-thirds (63%) of tech executives surveyed said their new investments in AI are accelerating; the rest are cautiously evaluating AI investments. Of those using AI tools, most (79%) are using Microsoft’s Copilot—a measure, perhaps, of the extent to which Microsoft already dominates the market in digital workplace software.
productivity promise is the critical element
Put the two surveys together and you get this: While corporate executives are moving fast to adopt AI, betting on the promise of a significant productivity bump, the workers below the C-suite still aren’t sure exactly how AI could or should be used to benefit them and their workflow. AI is an incredibly promising technology. But it’s not good enough yet—or trusted enough—to be easily integrated into most people’s jobs.
The hype and the high stock prices depend on the big worker productivity bump coming through. The problem is, as the Gallup survey found, very few workers have found a way to adopt AI. That may come—but perhaps not fast enough to prevent the bursting of the bubble.