Since the inception of ChatGPT, the world’s largest companies have been pitted against each other to talk about adopting cutting-edge AI tools.
However, more and more are frustrated by the “digital illiteracy” of their bosses, keeping them away from the promised productivity gains using AI.
Tech.io research in 2023 he found two thirds among employers hardly adopted the new AI technology in their workplace due to lack of awareness about its usefulness.
Now, workers say this reluctance is holding back productivity. According to a survey by STEM consulting group SThree, workers say they are wasting six hours a week on manual tasks that could easily be automated with the right tools.
63% of employees believed that the main reason their bosses did not adopt AI tools was because they were “digitally illiterate”.
A construction worker in the Netherlands told SThree that “(the lack of access to the latest AI tools) has caused a significant drop in motivation to take on new challenges at work.”
A Japanese engineer, on the other hand, told the group, “I have to spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks that can be automated.”
Europe’s AI boom
Europe trails the US in terms of big tech companies, and the biggest winners of the Gen AI boom have come from the States with Nvidia, Google and Meta, to name a few.
However, there are signs that the region’s largest companies, mostly of industrial origin, are taking steps to incorporate AI into their workflows. Automakers like Volkswagen have adopted chatbots for in-car entertainment systems and are exploring the use of AI to improve safety and automation.
Oil and gas giant Shell, meanwhile, has used AI to help optimize drilling operations and improve maintenance.
“The question for European companies is how they can leverage AI more aggressively, regardless of where it comes from. There is so much potential to leverage the billions of dollars being invested around the world,” Mark Read CBE, chief executive of advertising giant WPP, previously said. luck.
SThree’s analysis, however, suggests that workers in non-tech sectors are not getting the access they need to the latest automated technology.
There is evidence that employees are beginning to use the technology covertly. A recent Salesforce report found that it was one in five employees “underground” AI usershiding their activities from colleagues and superiors because they are unsure of the rules and expectations about using technology in the workplace.
The research contradicts the rhetoric that workers are afraid of being replaced by new AI tools and that employers want to avoid adopting the technology.
Customer service staff above all, they fear it will be replaced by AI, which tech groups like Klarna hope cut his staff 1,800 with the help of AI.
“Of course, job security concerns around technological advances are real and leaders should not ignore them,” said Timo Lehne, CEO of SThree.
“But our findings mean that leaders are too skeptical and need to embrace AI as their teams already have. If they don’t, they will become an obstacle to their organization’s future growth and a source of increased employee frustration.”
