60% of Americans Use AI for Search, Only 37% for Workplace Tasks, New Poll Finds (apnews.com) 65
60% of American adults use AI to search for information, but far fewer have adopted the technology for workplace productivity, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Only 37% of respondents reported using AI for work tasks, while 40% said they use it for brainstorming ideas.
The survey of 1,437 adults, conducted July 10-14, reveals a significant generational gap in AI adoption. Among adults under 30, 74% use AI for information searches and 62% for generating ideas, compared to just 23% of those over 60 who use it for brainstorming. About one-third of Americans use AI for writing emails, creating or editing images, or entertainment purposes. A quarter use it for shopping, while 16% report using AI for companionship -- a figure that rises to 25% among younger adults.
The survey of 1,437 adults, conducted July 10-14, reveals a significant generational gap in AI adoption. Among adults under 30, 74% use AI for information searches and 62% for generating ideas, compared to just 23% of those over 60 who use it for brainstorming. About one-third of Americans use AI for writing emails, creating or editing images, or entertainment purposes. A quarter use it for shopping, while 16% report using AI for companionship -- a figure that rises to 25% among younger adults.
Assumption (Score:5, Informative)
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I'd like to see more examples of realistic use-cases. Yes, it can guess-write code, write rough drafts of company content or guess-answer questions on it (when trained on company content), guess data form entries, guess-automate keyboard sequences, but what else?
Re:Assumption (Score:4, Insightful)
It can give me wrong answers when I ask it basic questions about ham radio equipment.
I was curious if an older mobile radio from Yaesu could receive the FM commercial broadcast band. It told me it could in the generic Google search AI field that I never asked for. When I found the Yaesu manual, Yaesu said that model could not.
I suspect that because the radio can receive 108MHz+, and the commercial band stops at 108MHz, it was conflating the two rather than seeing 108MHz as a boundary, but regardless of why it was getting the answer wrong.
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> It can give me wrong answers when I ask it basic questions about ham radio equipment.
Well, you gotta hack into more ham radio guides and train your bot better.
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Google and the internet allowed that even before AI. One could buy essays on common topics, for example.
But I was generally considering the domain of work, not student-hood.
Re:Assumption (Score:4, Interesting)
One area where I find AI useful is in automated transcription and summarizing of Teams meetings.
Unfortunately, the trend in my company is to move various discussions from e-mail to Teams threads, or - even worse, IMO - to various meetings over Teams. This is principally driven by younger generation folks, who seem to think e-mail is too old-fashioned, despite Teams having the worst UI and usage model I have ever seen. This particular rant aside, AI integrated with Teams has done a lot to alleviate the pain points. AI gives me a text summary of the meeting that I can scan quickly for main points; I can then ask for clarifications, or ask the AI to give me a shortcut to the time in the meeting when some issue was discussed. AI can also build lists of work items decided in the meeting, lists of areas of disagreement with summaries of the arguments on both sides, and I get all that without having to listen to folks rambling about - more or less coherently - for minutes and wasting everybody's time.
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Amen! It's like it was designed by a drunk committee.
But I'll add "transcribe and summarize meetings" to the list.
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I'd like to see more examples of realistic use-cases.
I've found it quite useful searching for the half-remembered book, film, tv-series, song. In particular song lyrics or titles where the snippet recalled features in several more popular songs you can add a bit of context and iterate down the list of likely candidates. With regular search engines sorting out the more popular artists can be quite the chore as often -"artist" isn't sufficient.
Other than that not so much.
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Thanks! What bot brand do you use for that?
Do note I intended to limit the scope to work use, but forgot to state so.
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Just copilot (microsoft edge browser) and search assistant (duckduckgo).
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Mod parent informative--but I haven't tested it yet, so mod this comment funny? This entire discussion might be an AI-generated confabulation?
Mod moderation censorious? But what part of that annoyed?
Re:Assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
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This. Its actually only used becuase Bing made it the first button on the left which used to be the default full text search results. And Google counts every search that their AI could stumble through because they display it at the top of the page, whether you wanted it or not.
Re: Assumption (Score:2)
Of course not. It creates an illusion of knowledge. Makes ignorant people look smarter. Appearing smarter rather than learning something is definitely not a good thing.
Ave Q: The Internet is for Porn (Score:5, Funny)
I am absolutely sure that at least 10% of AI usage is for porn.
Write a story where gets ed by , at .
Re:Ave Q: The Internet is for Porn (Score:4, Funny)
maybe Visa/MC should say something about that
"Use AI for search"... of their own volition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or are they "using AI for search" because all of the major search providers just stick that summary at the top of every page of results?
Re:"Use AI for search"... of their own volition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or are they "using AI for search" because all of the major search providers colossally suck at netting results that aren't ads? You know... kinda like how Google used to function.
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the new war will be about who can produce the most ideologically correct ai.
Thats the hilarious thing about Grok and other AI models that have been trained on factual content and told not to hallucinate, they cannot make sense of having a far right viewpoint wrapped onto them while still adhering to factual reality because the connection simply isn’t real. It has no rational justification possible, likely because one simply does not exist in any possible form. AI don’t yet understand how to fear monger the masses because they cannot think and rationalize on the level n
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no choice is a choice...
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Mmmhmm.
I don't want the AI response. It's wrong often enough that I can't trust it even if it happens to be right.
But the high point of Internet search was altavista.digital.com, so I guess I don't expect much anymore.
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i used gemini, co-pilot and chat-gpt to get three different incorrect answers to a question about standards document.
AI is the best
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Summary implies it's a choice, as you mention, search engines like google now promote their AI summary over linking to actual sites/articles -- so I guess I'm "using" AI for search but it's the default behavior of the the browser, not an active/conscious action on my part.
Probably just another way for AI pushers (looking for funding etc) to say "look at the adoption rate!", it's not really an adoption rate if there's no choice though.
I've been using the &udm=14 add to the querystring to turn it off when
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Which just means I'm using a search engine, not that I'm "using AI".
I did once use an AI to generate a logo for an in-game corporation. I didn't like the results I got, so I used one from a mod pack instead.
"X4: Foundations" was the game, should you be curious.
Re: "Use AI for search"... of their own volition? (Score:2)
You're probably right. Just like big companies claim their devs write X% of code using AI while all they do is use an AI-enabled IDE.
It's an illusion created to excite investors, make them flock to the greatest adopters in the name of illusionary gains from an illusionary tech.
Defaults are important (Score:3)
AI can't do much for work yet (Score:4)
Try this:
Open up an Excel sheet. Ask it to highlight all zip codes int eh western US. Or, ask it to make a pivot table for you. Good luck. It just tells you how to do it, it won't actually *do* it.
If AI could do this sort of thing, I'd be all in. It's not there yet.
If you just need text of some sort, it's fine. I use it for that. Things like "Make a job description for a SQL developer." It's pretty good at that stuff. But until it can actually automate tasks, it's going to be a hard sell for companies to spring for the steep licensing costs.
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Re:AI can't do much for work yet (Score:4, Informative)
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But, with your Google search, say you find a nice job description for a SQL developer. Now, you want to add items related to performance tuning, and remove items related to backup and restore. With AI, you can simply follow up with amendments like that, and it will helpfully make the updates. With your web search, you have to either start over, or make the changes manually.
This is admittedly a trivial use case. Some use cases for spitting out text are more involved, and therefore more useful when done by AI
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Issues that make the news are by definition, dramatic. The news doesn't cover ordinary things, because that's boring and nobody would read the news or click on the accompanying ads. As a result, the AI problems reported in the news are, by definition, rare and unusual, not the norm. Whatever disaster or terrible thing you might see in the news, is always worse than the real state of the world.
That said, I'd characterize these issues as growing pains. The industries will recognize the problems that arise fro
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Yes, I do agree that AI isn't as capable or beneficial for coding as the advertisers would have us believe.
As for the threat of AI to journalists, there is a range of management styles among journalism organizations. Some are toxic and the management would not hesitate to use this as leverage. Others actually care about journalism and will continue to care about real journalism.
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It can do this. You need to look at agents.
You have to give them the keys.. but they will drive.
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Sure, you're looking at agents with steep license fees. Most companies aren't ready to pay those (yet). Or, agents with of questionable origins, or that don't comply with HIPAA or GDPR or other regulations that your company might have to comply with.
I was referring to the Copilot AI that comes with Excel, not additional software that you have to buy.
Re:AI can't do much for work yet (Score:5, Insightful)
> AI can't do much for work yet (Score:5)
Before you mod me down, please consider this. Most of us still on Slashdot are old geezers. We are here because old habits die hard. And, as we age, many of us become reluctant to change. I use AI daily for work. It is a tool, like many others. But more complicated than anything we have seen in quite a long time. It takes a lot of work to get good at it. Throwing a few random prompts at it will produce disappointing results. But once you do get good at it, the results are exceptionally good.
Few of us are programming in assembly or zeros and ones. Many of us have moved from programming in lower level languages to higher level languages. We are getting close to a point when English becomes the new higher level language. Still, not everybody will become a great programmer overnight. Asking good questions, even in plain English requires skill and intelligence. Garbage in/Garbage out rules still apply.
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It's not black and white.
English won't become a programming language. If it were, we would already be using other no-code solutions that were advertised as the future.
Each time something no-code gets big, people want a more efficient way than English or stacking some blocks together and if you invent a concise syntax you end up with a programming language.
But English can be a good language to instruct your tools. Did you ever think "If I could only tell the IDE what to do instead of searching for minutes in
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Yep, I don't disagree. I'm 59, I supposed that's "old." I too use AI every day, but I also find it disappointing in some way, every day. GitHub Copilot, for example, _really_ struggles to add new code in the proper place. Ask it to refactor a function, for example, it's likely to place the new function inside the old one, rather than replace the old one with the new one. Or it doesn't bother to add header or using references, or other stupid stuff. It's useful, yes, but you have to work hard to make it real
I use it for search and also... (Score:2)
...for tech support
Whether it's looking for information in a software manual or a chip data sheet, I can usually find the answer quicker by using perplexity
Not much of a digital turk (Score:2)
My AI use has devolved into natural language searches. It provides patently wrong information more often than not when used beyond that capacity.
Since I have to validate its answers, I might as well just search for information the "old fashioned" way - it at least keeps my brain sharp.
100% using it for search means some avoid it (Score:2)
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Just goes to show how important it can be to read the 2nd paragraph...
Don't tell anyone how lazy I was, ok?
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60% for search? (Score:2)
60% of American adults use AI to search for information,
Because the search results are not overly contaminated into uselessness by "ad buys" so look for that to go away in the next three to six months. Not to worry, it will turn into just another Google Search in the coupon book when a dictionary is required very soon.
The only reason... (Score:2)
AI searches (Score:2)
60% of Americans Use AI for Search, Only 37% for Workplace Tasks, New Poll Finds
AI searches are generally better than the normal Google searches but the AI answers are still pretty full of shit for less mainstream topics. If you are searching for anything niche like medieval history, latin inscriptions, details on WWII aircraft engines, rare diseases ... the AI will very confidently serve you up a big steaming pile of complete bullsiht. If they ever fix that problem Google had better watch out because their AI sucks balls.
AI not good when accuracy matters (Score:2)
Fundamental lack of trust (Score:5, Insightful)
What AI spits out is fundamentally worthless because it can't be trusted. If I can't depend on a tool to provide me with trusted knowledge/solution to my problem, the tool has absolutely bo value to me.
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> worthless because it can't be trusted.
And humans can?
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Experienced humans? Yes.
People who use AI without the experience, without the ability to call BS on AI output? No.
Only... (Score:2)
Assuming these numbers are correct, I don't think 37% is a small percentage, given how recent AI tools are. Even less if you think that there are still several careers and job positions which aren't really touched by it.
IDENTICAL rates (Score:2)
Not everyone works. The labor force participation rate is 62.3% as of June. Well, guess what? 62.3% or 60% is 37%. So, the rates of use are identical.
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that's supposed to read "62.3% OF 60% ..."
How do they know this for sure? (Score:2)
Sure, 60% of Americans use AI for search. Because the search engines default to it now. There is literally no way to turn it off. You Google something, you get "Gemni." They also stealth activated Gemni on Android phones as the standard "Assistant" and I had to jump through hoops to turn that off.
See here [wired.com]. Yeah, it's a year old but it's still true.
For Google, I almost always click on the "web" tab as soon as it generates the AI slop, so Google does what it used to do in the first place. The results are far
if I used AI for search (Score:2)
My apologies, I didn't intend to.
Framing (Score:1)
AI hallucination is a problem (Score:2)
I've used AI for a number of tasks trying to analyze data in datasets. I've also used it to perform searches and found that more than half the time, there is not-valid data. Even after using various prompts to discourage "guessing", I've been validating the responses and finding a large number are just outright fabrication. If you're using AI to do research or find citations and claiming it as your work, you do so at your peril!