While a rising majority of workers in the take a negative attitude toward AI in the workplace, others are welcoming the tech with open arms — even going so far as to pay for AI services out of their own pockets.
According to a recent workplace survey conducted by Deloitte and flagged by Reuters, workers in the UK are spending a collective $1.3 billion annually on generative AI for their jobs, without even expensing it. The survey is based on responses from 25,000 workers across the continent, which Deloitte calls the “largest study of workplace GenAI use conducted in a single country.”
Overall, the AI adoption rate in UK workplaces is massive, with 63 percent of working adults reporting that they actively use generative AI for work. Though the polling methods aren’t an exact match, we can compare that to a similarly-timed survey of US workers by Gallup, which suggests that 52 percent of American workers use AI in some capacity, though only 15 percent do so daily.
In the UK, nearly half of the workers surveyed said they use free AI tools, while 34 percent said they used generative AI provided by their employers. Still, one in six workplace AI users reported paying for at least one kind of tool themselves — the cohort collectively spending over $1 billion on AI every year.
