AI offers new skills and opportunities

An independent study by Censuswide, sponsored by Jitterbit, a global leader in empowering transformation through automation, reveals the promise artificial intelligence (AI) is creating for office workers. Many see AI as offering new skills and personal growth opportunities.

The study surveyed 1,022 full-time office workers in the U.K. and U.S., unearthing how workers really feel about AI. The findings uncovered positivity about working with AI technology in professional settings.

Key findings include:

Workers see beyond AI demonization

85% of office workers expect AI to improve their roles, dispelling fears of job displacement and embracing the potential for job augmentation and optimization

AI seen more as help, not hindrance

96% of office workers believe AI can enhance their professional skills, reflecting broad acceptance and excitement about the technology

Dystopian robot future no concern

61% of office workers are not concerned about AI replacing human jobs, indicating a growing understanding of AI as a tool that complements human efforts

Bill Conner, President and CEO of Jitterbit, commented on the findings, “Rather than being distracted by negative headlines, office workers see beyond the AI hype. This is an evolution, not a revolution. U.S. and U.K. employees are identifying what AI should be used for; learning skills, automating processes, and outsourcing routine tasks to focus on more strategic efforts. AI is changing the world, and our research shows office workers are open to the true potential this incredible technology offers on a practical level.”

Younger workers most excited about skills

88% of office workers see AI as a valuable educational resource, jumping up to 98% for those ages 18-25. The top three skills office workers want to learn through AI are:

Analytical and statistical skills (36%)

Financial management skills (35%)

Coding and development (32%)

Solving problems, not processes

Automating mundane tasks has been the promise of AI for the last decade, but this issue is finally resolved with generative AI (GenAI) that creates new content, such as text or images, by learning patterns from existing data and generating similar outputs. The top anticipated benefits of AI include:

Reducing time spent gathering information from work systems and applications (46%)

Increasing time for thoughtful work (33%)

Providing more time for larger projects (33%)

AI revalues job roles

Respondents offered strong opinions on AI’s current capabilities and limitations, as well as where human expertise remains invaluable.

Office roles perceived to be most suitable for AI replacement were customer support, 24%; coding, 19%; reception work, 17%; social influencers, 17%; and parking wardens/attendants, 15%. Those believed to be least likely replaced by AI included teachers (11%), journalists (11%), lawyers (10%) and CEOs (10%).

Manoj Chaudhary, CTO of Jitterbit, added, “AI is evolving the workplace by automating routine tasks and unlocking new opportunities for office workers. This transformative technology empowers employees to focus on strategic and creative endeavors, fostering innovation and enhancing productivity. By infusing AI into low-code solutions, any employee can integrate endpoints, automate systems and even build applications using AI assistants that can converse in natural language.”

Andrew Grill, Actionable Futurist and Author of Digitally Curious, examined the research and shared, “AI is the future, and the workforce knows it. They also are more realistic about its capabilities than the media portrays. There aren’t less jobs for humans because of AI technology — instead, there are more productive ways to accomplish them. As smart as AI can be, it will always need a human to command it.”