University of Iowa professors have found that more people use artificial intelligence (AI) tools personally than at work, following preliminary results from a national survey.
The UI team aims to publish their findings in an academic paper by the end of February. Kenneth Brownsaid the Tippie College of Business professor of business administration.
brown It said use at school counts as a workplace activity. Brown and his team collaborated with the UI Social Science Innovation Center; VerasiteA data company that conducts public opinion polls sends a survey to 1,000 respondents across the country.
Brown said more than half of respondents who use AI said they use it for personal activities such as creating workout plans or creating recipes, but only one-third of respondents said they use it at work.
Brown said a quarter of the respondents were retired, and more than 70% of them personally used ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
Drew JauronPhD Tippy College of Business student and contributor to the survey, said around 250 respondents were either not familiar with or had never used an AI tool. Jauron said 20 to 30 people expressed strong aversion to AI tools.
Mr. Brown said this along with Mr. Jauron and Associate Professor. brian anne The Faculty of Education assisted in the design of the study.
Brown said he is proud of the fact that the 1,000 people surveyed are a good representation of the average American adult, including a variety of groups such as retirees and part-time workers.
“This is a very good representation of American adults,” he says. “We’re not just looking at people who are working. We also have some students. We also have some people who work part-time. It’s a really nice sample of people.”
Brown said he was most surprised by the high uptake of AI tools among retirees, but his co-researcher Anne said he was least surprised. Brown said Anne told her in a personal phone call that her parents often use AI to analyze complex issues such as foreign policy that they see on the news.
Brown said AI language models can explain concepts in natural language, bringing society closer to the personal digital assistance that science fiction fascinates.
“WI’ve been thinking about the idea of personal digital assistance for a long time. “I thought there were very limited things that Siri could do for me. I certainly don’t have robots in my house, so this feels like a meaningful step toward having a personal digital assistant,” he said.
Brown said the decline in the number of employees leveraging AI could be a result of companies taking longer to understand and begin to allow the use of AI in UIs like Microsoft Co-Pilot.
“While the University of Iowa is partnering with Co-Pilot, we didn’t just throw Co-Pilot at our students the moment it became available,” he said. “We did some research and did some research, but we had to worry about cost. There are a lot of companies experimenting and exploring applications of AI.”
For personal use, Jauron said, following the advent of the Internet and Google, AI has become the most prominent source of web search in history. Jauron said he uses AI more effectively than Google to help brainstorm personal projects such as mixing cocktails.
“We’re really starting to replicate human expertise in a lot of ways,” he said. “The danger is when we use it in place of human expertise in places where it is still needed.”
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Jauron said that while many people in the survey mentioned using AI to understand health and medical information, which could be useful when there is no immediate health care provider, he was concerned about long-term consequences, such as people potentially relying on the tool over their own experience and abilities.
Jauron also said retirees are more interested in using the software than younger working adults. Jauron said he believes younger generations, who are less reliant on AI than the retirees surveyed, are making a conscious choice to use it less.
“I think in our younger generation, we’re looking for authenticity and creativity,” he says. “There’s a desire to have real experiences. Live events are becoming popular again. I think some people are pushing back because they think AI is fake.”
ivy suntellerThe second-year UI student said she has completely refrained from using AI and only gets information online from search engines like Google.
Santeller said she believes AI can be a great resource, but that it cannot replace human contributions in fields such as her chosen major, visual arts and journalism.
“It’s being overdone,” she said. “There are fields like visual arts and journalism where it just doesn’t make sense to outsource human contributions. Just don’t use it. ”
Santeller said that in a world driven by social media that revolves around appearance, constantly relying on AI to avoid mistakes can be detrimental in a learning environment like a university.
“The whole point of university, or education in general, and secondary education in particular, is to apply your ideas, even if they are wrong or not the most advanced,” she says.
Seth KingAs an associate professor of special education in the College of Education, he recently wrote: article Learn how schools are starting to leverage AI in special education due to staffing shortages and limited funding.
King said that while the study found that the use of AI in the workplace is lower than in personal use, he believes the tools are being adopted at a deliberate rate in special education.
King said that in a recent summer, the Office of Special Education Programs hosted a social gathering where speakers explained to educators how they could leverage AI in lesson planning.
“This is different than just saying those tools exist,” he said. “It’s almost like an endorsement of its use. And there are also a lot of practitioner-level articles that tell people how to use it.”
King said that even as the technology continues to expand, the balance between the use of AI in work and home projects is likely to vary by profession, emphasizing the consequences of personal use over workplace use.
“Even if you’re a taxi driver, if you’re using AI, it probably doesn’t have a lot of direct application to your profession,” he said. “The findings are somewhat different than what I’m seeing. I’d also add that there are some differences in the professions they’re expecting.”
Jauron said he hopes the findings will spark future research into aspects such as how people medically rely on AI tools more than doctors and the impact of students learning information from AI brief summaries rather than reading textbooks.
““We just need to be more aware that this is becoming a part of people’s lives. We as a society, as people, need to address what role it plays in our lives,” he said.
