Impacting Work With Generative AI

New Report Details How Generative AI Impacts Work

Aberdeen's latest research offers insight into the ways professionals use generative AI today, as well as how AI might affect work in the future.

By Adrianna Nine March 29, 2023

We hear a lot about how artificial intelligence—particularly generative AI like ChatGPT—might impact the labor market, but how are people viewing and integrating AI into their work right now? A report published Tuesday offers insight into how professionals use generative AI today and how those professionals believe AI might impact their work in the future. 

The report is the latest out of Aberdeen, a market research division of Spiceworks. (Editors' Note: Aberdeen and Spiceworks are owned by ExtremeTech's parent company, Ziff Davis.) Aberdeen analysts surveyed 642 professionals about their familiarity with tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, how they leverage generative AI (if at all), and how they believe AI might “shape the future of the internet.” 

Of those 642 people, 59 percent had tried using generative AI tools. Over half of those professionals had used an AI chatbot at least once; only 20% had tried using text-to-image tools, like the art generators that have exploded in popularity and disfavor over the past year. A decent chunk of respondents had “extensively used” generative AI tools to find information faster than a conventional search engine (64%), write long-form content (41%), seek out solutions to business problems (33%), or answer questions they’d typically address themselves (49%). Only a few professionals (7%, 1%, 3%, and 8%, respectively) had not used generative AI for these purposes, with the remaining respondents sitting somewhere in between.

A bar graph showing the number of respondents who said they'd use AI chatbots vs search engines to find information online.

Information-seeking seems to be a popular use of generative AI among professionals. Nearly half (42%) of respondents said they’d likely use AI-powered chatbots to find answers online, while just 24% said they’d use search engines. (The remaining respondents were undecided.) Aberdeen notes that this could be because chatbots can provide answers without requiring users to click through to a website, where they’d likely have to sift through more information than they need. However, most respondents (84%) said they’d like to see AI-generated answers cite their sources using the links that would otherwise be found in search engine results. 

Generative AI’s climb toward ubiquity understandably has many people wringing their hands. When asked whether AI would bring about positive or negative societal change, 41% of Aberdeen’s respondents said they were hopeful (positive), 39% were worried (negative), and 19% were unsure. Slightly more universal was the notion that advanced AI would “alter society greatly, and in unexpected ways,” at 67% of respondents.  ....