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 are on the rise in the coming year.
Sure, companies have been automating work for generations, and surveys say 60% of companies will use software, tools and/or other technologies to automate tasks performed by employees in the next 12 months. intend to use. This is little changed compared to the 59% who said their companies had automated tasks in the past 12 months.
But when asked specifically about the use of AI, the responses indicated a significant tipping point. Among businesses that expect to automate in the next 12 months, about 54 percent said they would use AI tools to automate tasks performed by employees, while 27 percent said they would not. will
That's roughly the opposite of 37% who used AI to automate in the past 12 months and 60% who didn't.
“CFOs say their firms are improving everything from paying suppliers, invoicing, procurement, financial reporting, and improving facilities utilization,” Duke Finance Professor John Graham, the survey's academic director, said in a statement. using AI to automate “It is among the top companies using ChatGPT to generate creative ideas and 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. This is up from 55% using AI over the past year.
Still, even smaller companies are getting on board, with 44% saying they will use AI to automate tasks in the next 12 months compared to 32% who won't and up from 29% who did in the last 12 months. I was the wind.
The survey doesn't necessarily suggest that companies will replace human workers entirely with AI, considering that employees perform multiple tasks for their jobs.
But it does suggest that AI skills will become increasingly important in the workplace, perhaps before people realize.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman told CNN that in three to five years, humans will likely have an “agent pilot” that helps them with tasks.
“This is job change. Human jobs will be replaced – but replaced by other humans using AI,” he added. “The whole idea is to be the human using the AI, to learn it, to do it, to execute it.”
But in the long run, AI's impact on the labor market may be more significant.
Earlier this year, venture capitalist Kai Fu Lee confirmed his prediction from 2017, when he said AI would replace 50% of human jobs in the next decade.
At the Fortune Innovation Forum in Hong Kong in March, good fortune Editor-in-Chief Allison Schontel asked her if the timeline was still intact.
He replied, “It's actually remarkably accurate. People criticized me for being too aggressive in 2017, 2018, 2019, and I was a little nervous at the time. But when General AI came out , I think everyone is on the bandwagon and believes that this is the right pace.