AI anxiety continues to hold back regular engagement

The world is said to be embracing GenAI more than ever – but studies continue to suggest that for all the hype, regular engagement with the expensive technology is not the norm. New research from Boston Consulting Group asserts that use in the workplace is growing – but also that it remains low, especially in the Global North.

With the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT tools for public use in late 2022, the last 18 months have seen a mounting wave of hype build around the apparent potential of generative AI. But beyond a brief window of time, most people have not taken the technology into their lives in the way excited investors (who continue to sink massive amounts of capital into vague AI projects) assumed they would.

At the start of the summer in 2024, a Deloitte poll found that only one-third of UK residents had even experimented with some form of generative AI. Worse, among respondents who said they had used the technology, only 10% used the technology daily, while 26% used it weekly.

Around the same time, another study from Oxford University and Reuters Institute found that very few people in six countries – including the UK – were regularly using AI products like ChatGPT. Only 2% of British respondents said they use such tools on a daily basis – as the researchers found that there was a "mismatch" between the "hype" around AI and the "public interest" in it.

Slow uptake

Now, a new study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has further suggested that demand for the supposedly revolutionary technology is low – at least in the Global North. Surveying 13,000 people across multiple geographies, BCG found that the lowest confidence in the technology, and the highest anxiety, tended to come from the most economically developed nations.

Historically, Japan has cultivated a reputation for being among the most technologically forward-thinking countries in the world, so the fact only 27% of respondents there had confidence in the technology might be a worry for the technology’s champions. At the same time, it had the highest level of anxiety around its implementation – with 28% of respondents anxious that it could result in a number of unforeseen social, economic and political problems. The US also saw 23% of people say the technology made them uneasy, and while the UK saw that fall to 18%, the fact only 37% of those respondents were ‘confident’ in it is hardly a ringing endorsement.

In contrast, the Global South’s leaders seem ready to embrace the technology – perhaps in part because they have a relatively low level of economic and industrial development, and AI allows them to expand the skills and resources needed to overhaul their civic infrastructure in a way which would benefit them – but also in a way that the North is less likely to need.

Stress-inducer

Even so, it is difficult to pin down just how many people are using AI on a daily basis in either region. BCG’s figures suggest, for example, that frontline employees (the most numerous group of workers, compared to managers and executives) have embraced the technology – a 32% rise seeing a mean of 52% saying they are regular users, apparently. But BCG’s study then details that in the Global South, 57% of frontline workers regularly use AI, while only 37% do so in the Global North – a number which should produce an average of 47%; five points shy of the alleged global average. When asked what the benefits are of generative AI, meanwhile, the usual response emerged: that AI and its generative form were big time savers.

Around 58% of respondents said that they saved over five hours per-week by leveraging GenAI. But while this theoretically this helps them in the short-term to balance their work and life (24% say the time they saved allows them to pursue activities beyond work; 26% to reach out to their family; 30% to connect with co-workers) – a 41% chunk say it simply adds more tasks to their workload. At the same time, the more they do with AI, the more they feel their jobs are at risk – with 49% of regular users fearing being replaced by GenAI, compared to 24% of non-users. This may be one of the things most likely to hold back wider engagement with the technology: the more you use it, the less secure and more anxious you seem to become.