This was a really interesting set of pie graphs from a SectionSchool webinar featuring Greg Shove I attended this week. It’s based on a survey from April, 2024 of 1300+ knowledge workers in the US, UK, and Canada. Special thanks to my boss for suggesting it.
AI Usage
This first one refers to AI usage:
The AI Class
And this one to key findings from “The AI Proficiency Report:”
- Only 7% of professionals are in the “AI class” - those who have integrated AI into their personal workflows
- Nearly 60% are “AI Newcomers” who have only used ChatGPT a few times
- Members of the AI class save up to 12 hours of working time per week using AI
- Most companies won’t see efficiency gains with just a small AI task force - they need to provide more employees with AI guidelines, approved tools, and training
| Category | Percentage | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Newcomers | 57% | Using AI once in a while, limited access at work, mostly free tools for personal use |
| AI Class | 7% | Integrating AI into daily workflows, 10%+ productivity gains, expert users |
| AI Skeptics | 11% | Nervous or resistant to AI, limited understanding of safe AI usage |
| AI Experimenters | 25% | Uses AI once a week, small productivity gains, understand basics |
A third of the AI class saves more than 30% of their time at work each week using AI. 95% of the AI Class are in companies who openly approve of the use of AI. The most productive AI users have access to company or team-wide LLMs. The AI Class use AI for everything, saving as much as 12 hours a week by using AI. Their favorite tools are ChatGPT-4, Perplexity, and Claude. These people have more time to make more impact that can drive more revenue and company goals–because they’re strategically automating what they don’t need to spend valuable time on. They also have strong buy-in from their employers, are in the top 8% in terms of prompting skills, and use AI for 3 or more use cases. (Source: The AI Proficiency Report)
Reflection
I have integrated AI into my personal workflows, so I can self-identify as a 7% of professionals. But one of the questions I’ve been struggling with is, “How can I maximize AI usage in my workflows MORE?” I crossed the threshold two weeks ago, when I had that “Eureka!” moment.
The moment when I realized I needed to stop and watch myself doing a work task, then rethink it with AI in mind and using the tools to capture efficiency. One task took two hours of work to refine the bulk of the work. Over the subsequent weeks, I’ve made other adjustments, but that first one was the one I asked myself:
- What are you doing?
- Why are you doing it that way?
- How could you change that workflow with AI?
- Applying the AI to the workflow, then asking, “Is this what I was aiming for? How can I improve the prompt to get closer?”
- Documenting what worked (or didn’t). Re-doing the work with AI to see what happened, and asking again, “Did this work?”
So, something that took me WEEKS of hard work, and in some cases I found impossible, was made easy. Like, instead of weeks, it takes 10 minutes. The hard part? Building the prompt to do what I want, fine-tuning it to get the result. But that doesn’t take as long now.
THAT was my breakthrough. From weeks to 10 minutes.
The problem? I’ll have to do this again with every workflow I use now. But I am confident of the process. Now I need to document that process of reinventing what I do with AI. It’s a lot of fun!