AI in companies: Thousands of bosses see no effect yet

Numerous executives still see no measurable impact from the use of AI in their companies, according to a study by the economic nonprofit research institution National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) from the USA. According to the study, surveyed companies reported low impacts of AI in the last three years – and over 80 percent found no impact on employment or productivity at all.

Nevertheless, the expectation remains that investing in AI will pay off: On average, respondents expected AI use to bring a productivity gain of 1.4 percent in the next three years. The benchmark for productivity is revenue per employee. They also expect to need fewer employees – the number of employees is expected to decrease by around 0.7 percent. In total, this corresponds to around 1.75 million fewer jobs in the companies surveyed.

Around 6000 CEOs, CFOs, and other executives from the USA, Great Britain, Germany, and Australia were surveyed for the study.

A clear discrepancy was also shown when asked how AI affects jobs. Employee surveys indicated that they expect an increase in employment due to AI – by around 0.5 percent in the coming years.

On average, AI is already used in 70 percent of companies. The USA led with 78 percent, followed by Great Britain with 71 percent, Germany with 65 percent, and Australia with 59 percent. Of the executives surveyed, slightly more than two-thirds regularly used AI, an average of 1.5 hours per week. A quarter stated that they did not use AI at all. The most common application scenario is language models for text creation (41 percent). This is followed by data processing via machine learning or the creation of visual content for 30 percent.

More productive or not more productive?

Recently, a whole series of studies have presented similarly sobering results. Measurable value from the introduction of AI has not yet reached the majority of companies, as analyses by Deloitte, PwC, and BCG had shown. Around 12 percent of the companies surveyed had so far achieved cost savings and value growth with it, PwC noted, for example.

However, there are also other voices, such as the European research institution CEPR, which sees a productivity increase of four percent through the use of AI in European companies in a current study. Large companies in particular benefited from this.

On the side of AI providers, there still seems to be confidence in leading a major revolution in the world of work. Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, for example, recently ventured the prediction in an interview that a large part of office jobs would be replaced by AI within 18 months. Whether this will happen remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the major tech corporations need ambitious narratives to justify their investments in AI data centers, estimated at several hundred billion US dollars. Recently, the stock markets have reacted relatively nervously to the announcement of large expenditures.

(axk)