Fact Checked by 
Research into how AI use at work is changing offers potentially surprising results for how widespread the use of such models is.
According to research from responsible AI company Anthropic as part of the launch of its Economic Index, workers using AI for three quarters or more of their tasks amounts to just 4% of the Claude users surveyed. Claude is Anthropic’s in-house AI model and a major rival to ChatGPT.
More people use AI for 25% of their tasks but that still only amounts to 36% of occupations, which might come as a surprise with widespread concern that AI will take over people’s jobs. It seems that few businesses are fully switching over to AI use in the workplace.
Breaking down AI use into sectors, 37% of those who use AI aids at work have software engineering roles, 10% work in media, the arts, and design, and 9% in education and library services.
Predictably, roles based in physical labor use AI the least. Generally speaking, 57% of AI use is geared towards facilitating human labor, while 43% automates tasks.
“AI use is more prevalent for tasks associated with mid-to-high wage occupations like computer programmers and data scientists, but is lower for both the lowest- and highest-paid roles,” noted Anthropic in its paper. “This likely reflects both the limits of current AI capabilities, as well as practical barriers to using the technology.”
An index to track AI use and its impact on the economy
As well as this research, Anthropic is launching its own Economic Index, in an attempt to understand how AI is impacting the economy. One of the major competitors to AI giants like OpenAI in the commercial machine learning space, Anthropic has maintained a focus on the ethics of AI, even as it progresses with its model, Claude.
The Economic Index initiative seeks to conduct research and track statistics around the impact AI is having on specific occupations. Anthropic is open-sourcing the data it’s gathered so far, in the hopes that others will draw further findings.
“Developing policy responses to address the coming transformation in the labor market and its effects on employment and productivity will take a range of perspectives,” the company said. “To that end, we are also inviting economists, policy experts, and other researchers to provide input on the Index.”
Featured image: Midjourney
