Slack Survey Looks at Accelerating AI Use in the Workplace

A recent survey from Salesforce’s Slack found that use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the workplace rose 24 percent from the previous quarter. The survey also looked at the average amount of time that desk workers spend on "low-value" tasks.

According to the survey of 10,000 desk workers, 1 in 4 claims to have tried AI tools for work, up from 1 in 5 a few months prior. One in 3 said they have used automation tools in their job. Of those, 80 percent said the technology is improving their productivity.

Top tasks where workers are seeing the most value from AI include writing assistance, automating workflows, and summarizing content. Summaries replaced research as a top value- add in respondents’ current work from a previous survey.

According to Slack, many desk workers are enthusiastic about AI’s potential to improve their on-the-job effectiveness. Forty-two percent of those polled said they are excited about the idea of the technology handling tasks from their current job, although 27 percent said they are concerned about it. Thirty-one percent claimed to be neutral on the matter.

The survey found that 81 percent of executives feel ""some urgency to incorporate generative AI into their organizations.” Fifty percent of leaders claimed to feel a high degree of urgency about the matter. Still, almost half of the survey’s desk worker respondents (43 percent) said they have received no guidance from their leaders on how to use AI tools at work.

The research seems to indicate that a lack of guidelines may lead to a lack of experimentation, and, therefore, a lack of innovation around the use of AI within companies.

"Lack of instruction may be preventing employees from experimenting with AI," Slack said in a news release about the survey. "Desk workers at companies that have defined AI guidelines are nearly six times more likely to have tried AI tools, compared with desk workers whose companies have no guidelines around AI usage. Even workers at companies whose usage guidelines limit the use of AI are more likely to have experimented with AI tools compared with workers at companies who have no guidelines around AI usage."

There are reasons, however, that company leaders may be hesitant to introduce AI guidelines into their organizations. Forty-four percent of executives polled cited data security and privacy as a top concern. Thirty-six percent cited AI reliability and accuracy. Twenty-five percent cited a lack of expertise and a skill gap among staff. Other top concerns included ethical and compliance issues (17 percent), customer trust and acceptance (17 percent), and cost of implementation and maintenance (16 percent).

All of this is not to say that executives aren’t also seeing significant benefits of implementing AI. They see the top benefits of integrating AI into business operations as: increased efficiency and productivity of employees (38 percent); data-driven decision-making (35 percent); innovation of products and services (34 percent); cost reductions (33 percent); increased focus on strategy over rote tasks (27 percent); and enhanced customer experience (18 percent).

It is highly likely that usage will continue to increase at a rapid pace as such benefits are realized and businesses figure out how to deal with their top concerns. Integrating AI into business operations only stands to increase a company’s competitive edge, and companies that fail to do so will be doing so to their own detriment.