Workers Ready to Embrace AI: 66% Want to use AI in the Workplace but Highlight Skill and Education Gaps

New research published by SnapLogic, a leader in intelligent integration and enterprise automation, reveals attitudes towards AI in the workplace are warming up: with almost two-thirds of workers reporting that they like the idea of using AI in their role, either currently or in the future.

According to SnapLogic’s survey of nearly 1,000 mid-senior management workers within large enterprises across the UK, US, and Australia, all respondents showed a good grasp of AI benefits: over half (54%) said they thought using AI would save them time; 46% said it would improve their productivity, and 37% said it would reduce risk and errors in their work.

However, respondents believe skills are an issue, with one-third (34%) of respondents claiming there are very few people within their organization with the skills required to implement and use AI. 39% said it would be hard to get everyone in their organization to fully adopt AI; while 19% were worried that they would not be able to work out how to use AI properly.

Respondents also revealed the main factors that would make them more likely to use AI in their role, either now or in the future: 42% wanted a better understanding of how AI would specifically benefit them in their role, while 36% wanted a safety net to reduce the risk that they would make mistakes.

An average of 62% of respondents said they were likely to use AI in their current role, with a slightly larger amount (66%) saying that they would welcome the idea of using AI either currently, or in the future. 70% of US respondents reported that they were currently likely to use AI, which is slightly more than those in the UK (56%) but less than Australia (74%). This shows a delta of usage as currently only 21% of the global workforce is using AI often, with 23% of US and Australian workers representing the high end compared to 18% of UK respondents.

And while employee education is globally cited as the largest barrier to adopting AI in the workforce (34% of global respondents reported so), US employees are the most welcoming with just 26% cautioning that their colleagues do not have the skills required to implement and use AI, compared to 35% of Australians and 40% of UK respondents.

Overall, lack of AI skills didn’t seem to be a significant detriment to their interest in using the technology, however, as only 34% of respondents said that lack of AI skills were an issue.

“The current business landscape is unpredictable, and that puts pressure on budgets and resources – and ultimately, on employees,” said Jeremiah Stone, CTO of SnapLogic. “Using AI to automate processes and improve productivity relieves this pressure. It’s very encouraging to hear workers say they understand how AI can benefit them in their own role, as enterprises need employee buy-in if they want to make an AI rollout successful.”

AI is being integrated into many different technologies and applications, including integration platforms. No stranger to AI in the workplace, SnapLogic developed Iris AI, an industry-first artificial intelligence that helps automate highly repetitive, low-level development tasks, eliminating integration backlogs that can stifle business initiatives. Iris uses advanced algorithms to learn from billions of metadata elements and millions of data flows via the SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform. It then applies that learning to improve the speed and quality of integrations across data, applications, and business processes by suggesting the next integration step, building a complete integration pipeline, or preparing data for app-to-app or data workflows.