Companies may have strategies in place for acquiring and adopting AI tools, but so far, workers appear to have minds of their own when it comes to day-to-day usage.
In fact, in some ways, employees are way ahead of the employers, new research suggests. Among 1,017 U.S. full-time desk workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who have worked with AI in the past 12 months, 80% said they’ve had a net positive experience with AI at work.
Yet, barely more than a third (36%) of those surveyed by consulting firm EisnerAmper said their company has a formal AI policy in place. Worse, only 22% reported that their employer actively monitors their AI usage.
“Executives are investing heavily in [AI’s] acquisition and implementation,” EisnerAmper wrote in its survey report. “But what happens after that first AI staff training session?”
Much of what happens results in time savings, with 64% of those polled saying they’ve been able to save time while getting more work done. Unfortunately for employers, 28% said they’ve used the time saved for personal reasons.
But they do not even receive training that’s relevant to most of their AI usage. A far greater proportion of the surveyed workers (60%) said they use free AI platforms than those who use internally developed platforms (24%) or external tools paid for by the company (43%).
And in a telling indicator of how AI is becoming embedded in some workers’ daily lives, 25% use AI tools that they personally pay for. Further, 28% of the employees admitted that they would use AI at work even if it were banned.
About half of them said using AI has made them happier at work, while barely more than 3% said it has decreased their happiness.
Still, employees remain mindful of the potential for AI to displace them from their jobs or cause other unwanted changes. A majority (52%) of the survey respondents said they were somewhat or very concerned about those possibilities.
As to what workers are using AI for on the job, the majority of the respondents said they’re using it to support their writing and editing, and to perform research.
About 82% of them said they’re somewhat or very confident about getting accurate and satisfactory outputs from AI, while 15% are not very or at all confident.
Unsurprisingly, a large majority (74%) of the respondents said someone should be compensated for their AI job experience.
