Measuring AI Uptake in the Workplace

Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be poised to raise productivity across various domains, including writing (Noy and Zhang 2023), programming (Peng et al. 2023), and research and development (Toner-Rodgers 2024; Korinek 2023). However, understanding the extent to which AI?and generative AI in particular?has been adopted as part of the production process remains an open question. This note reviews the extant surveys on AI adoption at both the employee and firm levels. Surveys of firms show a wide spread of adoption rates, ranging from 5 percent to about 40 percent. Surveys of workers show between 20 and 40 percent of workers using AI in the workplace, with much higher rates in some occupations like computer programming. While estimates of the level of AI uptake vary, measurement considerations partly explain the differences; more importantly, the available time series data all suggest rapid growth in adoption.