Artificial intelligence (AI) has had “essentially zero” impact on businesses according to a new study.
Despite rampant media coverage of AI and its use among businesses, despite investors pumping money into firms that talk about their AI usage (though notably not Allbirds) and despite some businesses mandating employees use AI to be in line for promotions, it has barely made a ripple to the actual efficacy of businesses.
The study, which compiled and analysed surveys of nearly 6,000 business leaders from Australia, the US, UK and Germany found that 69 per cent of businesses use AI and that 75 per cent of executives expect their firms to use some form of AI in the next three years.
The most common use cases for AI are ‘text generation using large language models,’ followed by ‘visual content creation’ and ‘data processing using machine learning’.
While the report didn’t specifically call out AI’s impact on marketing functions, it’s clear that those use cases line up with a number of marketing outputs.
The report said that less commonly cited uses were image processing using machine learning (20 per cent), robotics (9 per cent of firms), and autonomous vehicles (3 per cent).
The tell, however, is that more than 90 per cent reported no impact of AI on own-firm employment over the past three years, and 89 per cent report no impact on labour productivity.
Though, the report also said that “most executives report small effects thus far on own-firm employment and productivity” and “a small percentage of executives report positive productivity effects to date”.
The feeling of no improvement in productivity was strongest in the US and Germany (91 per cent of firms), followed by the UK (89 per cent), and Australia (79 per cent).
In fact, three-fifths of all firms expect no impact over the next three years and a quarter of all firms expect productivity to increase by less than 5 per cent.
Executives at larger and higher-paying firms anticipate greater productivity gains from AI, as do those in the information, communications and administrative support sectors. US business executives foresee a stronger AI productivity boost—2.25 per cent over the next three years—than executives in the other countries.
Adoption of AI tools is currently highest in the US (78 per cent), followed by the UK (71 per cent), Germany (65 per cent) and Australia (59 per cent).
However, despite the clamour around whether AI will take jobs, the report found that more than 90 per cent of firms on average estimate that AI has had no impact on employment numbers over the last three years.
This percentage is highest in Germany (95 per cent of firms), followed by the US (89 per cent of firms), UK (89 per cent), and Australia (81 per cent). Among the remaining firms which report some impact, the results skewed slightly to the negative side in the UK and US, and slightly to the positive in Germany and Australia.
Looking forwards, again, the results run somewhat contrary to much of the chatter about AI.
More than three-fifths of all firms expect that AI will have no impact over the next three years on its hiring of new staff.
Less than a fifth of execs surveyed expected a small negative impact, lowering employment by less than 5 per cent. Just 8 per cent of execs expect a large negative impact on employment.
These results are similar across the US and UK. German firms recorded an expectation of a smaller change compared to US and UK firms, the report put this down to the peculiarities of the German labour market and its strong union presence across most industries.
In contrast, Australian firms remain more evenly balanced on the expected employment impacts of AI – 16 per cent expect a negative impact and 16 per cent expect a positive impact overall.
The results of the study are plain to see. But where this leaves the world of advertising, marketing and media, which have been among the most vociferous advocates and adopters of AI remains to be seen.
