Pew has a new report out where they talked to workers in the US and asked them how they were using AI at work. The data is really interesting in a few places, so I wanted to share the most notable insights in my view.

First off, only 16% of workers are using AI chatbots on a regular basis at work. That's definitely low, although it could also be a matter of chatbots not being super relevant to many job roles (which is backed up by "it's not relevant to my work" being the top reason cited for why someone doesn't use a bot at work). We see some of this when breaking down this number by age and education levels. Basically, the younger your are and the more educated you are, the more likely you are to use a chatbot regularly.

In terms of what they're actually doing, most people are using them to assist in research, edit things they've already written, and summarize meeting notes. Only 21% of people are generating images, which I think aligns well with what I see in my day-to-day as well.

The last thing that stood out to me was the fact that the vast majority of employers (79%) have not weighed in on whether they want their employees using chatbots in the first place. Meanwhile, 12% encourage it and 9% discourage it. It seems most companies are being pretty hands-off and leaving things to individual employees.

The one thing this study didn't seem to get into is what job categories are using AI chatbots the most. My guess is that software companies are leading the charge here, but I'd be interested to see if that assumption is wrong. I'd also like to see this same survey run regularly to see how the numbers change in time.