KUALA LUMPUR (June 6): 77 percent of Malaysians feel they lack the time and energy to get work done, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of this, 84 percent of Malaysians have started using artificial intelligence (AI) to save time, boost creativity and focus on the tasks that matter most.
According to the 2024 Work Trends Index released by Microsoft and LinkedIn, 56% of employees are using AI to help them catch up, such as by having AI recap missed meetings to keep them up to date. The joint report is based on a survey of 31,000 people across 31 countries, with 1,000 Malaysians interviewed.
“In fact, the workload has increased since COVID-19. [is sent] “In a day, people receive more than four email responses that they have to process. So, people are spending more time on work and less time on creative pursuits. A lot of time is wasted on what we call 'work about work,'” said K Raman, managing director of Microsoft Malaysia.
The rapid growth of AI has led to a rise in “AI power users,” which Raman defines as people who use AI every day. Raman said AI power users save about 10 hours of work per month, and of those, 85% use AI to start their day and 82% use AI to prepare for the next day.
92% of AI power users say that having AI take over mundane tasks has made their workload more manageable and increased their job satisfaction, thanks to the time saved that allows them to focus on more creative work.
However, the widespread adoption of AI has raised concerns about the concept of “Bring Your Own AI (BYOAI)” – the use of external AI for enterprise-related tasks – which increases the risk of data leakage for companies without a responsible AI adoption strategy, a situation that is further exacerbated by the fact that 52% of people who use AI at work are reluctant to admit that they are using AI.
Apart from job trends, AI has also brought about changes in the hiring ecosystem as more job seekers and employers are adopting it.
Rohit Kalsy, head of sales for emerging markets in Southeast Asia at LinkedIn, said there has been a 142-fold increase in AI-related skills and projects such as ChatGPT and Copilot being listed on resumes.
On the employer side, 62% of business leaders said they would not hire a candidate without AI skills, and 65% said they would prefer to hire someone with AI skills over someone without them, regardless of past experience.
“This highlights that AI capabilities are no longer an 'X' factor but an essential part of today's workplace. The past year has shown that professionals are aware of the need to properly upskill for the AI era. Since January 2023, we have seen record numbers of learners taking LinkedIn's top AI courses across Southeast Asia, Australia and India,” said Rohit.
