25th July 2024
AI Automation in the Workplace Approaches a Critical Turning Point
AI automation in the workplace is reaching a tipping point, with a Duke University survey indicating that 54% of companies plan to use AI to automate tasks within the next year, up from 37% previously. Large companies lead this trend, with small businesses also increasing AI adoption. This shift suggests AI skills will become crucial in the workplace, transforming job roles rather than completely replacing human workers.
This article was written by Jason Ma and published in Fortune.
More U.S. companies are about to flip the “on” switch when it comes to automating tasks with artificial intelligence.
According to a survey of CFOs by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, plans to use AI in the coming year are surging.
To be sure, companies have been automating work for generations, and the survey said that 60% of companies plan in the next 12 months to use software, equipment, and/or other technologies to automate tasks being done by employees. That’s little changed compared with the 59% who said their companies have automated tasks over the prior 12 months.
But when asked specifically about using AI, the answers indicated a key tipping point. Among the businesses that expect to automate in the next 12 months, about 54% said they will use AI tools to automate tasks being done by employees while 27% said they won’t.
That’s nearly the reverse when compared with the 37% that used AI to automate in the prior 12 months and the 60% that didn’t.
“CFOs say their firms are tapping AI to automate a host of tasks, from paying suppliers, invoicing, procurement, financial reporting, and optimizing facilities utilization,” said Duke finance professor John Graham, academic director of the survey, in a statement. “This is on top of companies using ChatGPT to generate creative ideas and to draft job descriptions, contracts, marketing plans, and press releases.”
Large companies are leading the stampede into AI, with 76% saying they will use it to automate in the coming year. That’s up from the 55% that used AI during the previous year.
Still, small companies are getting on board, too, with 44% saying they will use AI to automate tasks in the next 12 months versus 32% that won’t and up from 29% that did in the prior 12 months.
The survey doesn’t necessarily suggest that companies will completely replace human workers with AI, considering that employees perform multiple tasks for their jobs.
But it does suggest that AI skills will be increasingly important in the workplace, perhaps sooner than people realize.
Read the full article: AI automation in the workplace is about to reach a major tipping point
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