The new global study, in partnership with The Upwork Research Institute, interviewed 2,500 global C-suite executives, full-time employees and freelancers. Results show that the optimistic expectations about AI’s impact are not aligning with the reality faced by many employees. The study identifies a disconnect between the high expectations of managers and the actual experiences of employees using AI.

Despite 96% of C-suite executives expecting AI to boost productivity, the study reveals that, 77% of employees using AI say it has added to their workload and created challenges in achieving the expected productivity gains. Not only is AI increasing the workloads of full-time employees, it’s hampering productivity and contributing to employee burnout.

  • barsquid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Wow shockingly employing a virtual dumbass who is confidently wrong all the time doesn’t help people finish their tasks.

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      It’s like employing a perpetually high idiot, but more productive while also being less useful. Instead of slow medicine you get fast garbage!

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      My dumbass friend who over confidently smart is switch to Linux bcz of open source AI. I can’t wait to see what he learns.

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    Me: no way, AI is very helpful, and if it isn’t then don’t use it

    created challenges in achieving the expected productivity gains

    achieving the expected productivity gains

    Me: oh, that explains the issue.

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    You mean the multi-billion dollar, souped-up autocorrect might not actually be able to replace the human workforce? I am shocked, shocked I say!

    Do you think Sam Altman might have… gasp lied to his investors about its capabilities?

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      Nooooo. I mean, we have about 80 years of history into AI research and the field is just full of overhyped promised that this particularly tech is the holy grail of AI to end in disappointment each time, but this time will be different! /s

      • Nobody@lemmy.world
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        Yeah, OpenAI, ChatGPT, and Sam Altman have no relevance to AI LLMs. No idea what I was thinking.

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          I prefer Claude, usually, but the article also does not mention LLMs. I use generative audio, image generation, and video generation at work as often if not more than text generators.

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            Good point, but LLMs are both ubiquitous and the public face of “AI.” I think it’s fair to assign them a decent share of the blame for overpromising and underdelivering.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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    The study identifies a disconnect between the high expectations of managers and the actual experiences of employees using AI.

    • Meron35@lemmy.world
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      The study identifies a disconnect between the high expectations of managers and the actual experiences of employees using AI.

      FTFY

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    The billionaire owner class continues to treat everyone like shit. They blame AI and the idiots eat it up.

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    because on top of your duties you now have to check whatever the AI is doing in place of the employee it has replaced

  • Hackworth@lemmy.world
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    I have the opposite problem. Gen A.I. has tripled my productivity, but the C-suite here is barely catching up to 2005.

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      Same, I’ve automated alot of my tasks with AI. No way 77% is “hampered” by it.

      • Hackworth@lemmy.world
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        I dunno, mishandling of AI can be worse than avoiding it entirely. There’s a middle manager here that runs everything her direct-report copywriter sends through ChatGPT, then sends the response back as a revision. She doesn’t add any context to the prompt, say who the audience is, or use the custom GPT that I made and shared. That copywriter is definitely hampered, but it’s not by AI, really, just run-of-the-mill manager PEBKAC.

        • Hackworth@lemmy.world
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          Voiceover recording, noise reduction, rotoscoping, motion tracking, matte painting, transcription - and there’s a clear path forward to automate rough cuts and integrate all that with digital asset management. I used to do all of those things manually/practically.

          e: I imagine the downvotes coming from the same people that 20 years ago told me digital video would never match the artistry of film.

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            imagine the downvotes coming from the same people that 20 years ago told me digital video would never match the artistry of film.

            They’re right IMO. Practical effects still look and age better than (IMO very obvious) digital effects. Oh and digital deaging IMO looks like crap.

            But, this will always remain an opinion battle anyway, because quantifying “artistry” is in and of itself a fool’s errand.

            • Hackworth@lemmy.world
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              Digital video, not digital effects - I mean the guys I went to film school with that refused to touch digital videography.

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            All the models I’ve used that do TTS/RVC and rotoscoping have definitely not produced professional results.

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              What are you using? Cause if you’re a professional, and this is your experience, I’d think you’d want to ask me what I’m using.

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                Coqui for TTS, RVC UI for matching the TTS to the actor’s intonation, and DWPose -> controlnet applied to SDXL for rotoscoping

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                  Full open source, nice! I respect the effort that went into that implementation. I pretty much exclusively use 11 Labs for TTS/RVC, turn up the style, turn down the stability, generate a few, and pick the best. I do find that longer generations tend to lose the thread, so it’s better to batch smaller script segments.

                  Unless I misunderstand ya, your controlnet setup is for what would be rigging and animation rather than roto. I do agree that while I enjoy the outputs of pretty much all the automated animators, they’re not ready for prime time yet. Although I’m about to dive into KREA’s new key framing feature and see if that’s any better for that use case.

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          I’m not working in tech either. Everyone relying on a computer can use this.

          Also, medicin and radiology are two areas that will benefit from this - especially the patients.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      Except it didn’t make more jobs, it just made more work for the remaining employees who weren’t laid off (because the boss thought the AI could let them have a smaller payroll)

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    AI is stupidly used a lot but this seems odd. For me GitHub copilot has sped up writing code. Hard to say how much but it definitely saves me seconds several times per day. It certainly hasn’t made my workload more…

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      Probably because the vast majority of the workforce does not work in tech but has had these clunky, failure-prone tools foisted on them by tech. Companies are inserting AI into everything, so what used to be a problem that could be solved in 5 steps now takes 6 steps, with the new step being “figure out how to bypass the AI to get to the actual human who can fix my problem”.

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      For anything more that basic autocomplete, copilot has only given me broken code. Not even subtly broken, just stupidly wrong stuff.

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      I’ll say that so far I’ve been pretty unimpressed by Codeium.

      At the very most it has given me a few minutes total of value in the last 4 months.

      Ive gotten some benefit from various generic chat LLMs like ChatGPT but most of that has been somewhat improved versions of the kind of info I was getting from Stackexchange threads and the like.

      There’s been some mild value in some cases but so far nothing earth shattering or worth a bunch of money.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        I have never heard of Codeium but it says it’s free, which may explain why it sucks. Copilot is excellent. Completely life changing, no. That’s not the goal. The goal is to reduce the manual writing of predictable and boring lines of code and it succeeds at that.

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          Cool totally worth burning the planet to the ground for it. Also love that we are spending all this time and money to solve this extremely important problem of coding taking slightly too long.

          Think of all the progress being made!

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        I presume it depends on the area you would be working with and what technologies you are working with. I assume it does better for some popular things that tend to be very verbose and tedious.

        My experience including with a copilot trial has been like yours, a bit underwhelming. But I assume others must be getting benefit.

    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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      Media has been anti AI from the start. They only write hit pieces on it. We all rabble rouse about the headline as if it’s facts. It’s the left version of articles like “locals report uptick of beach shitting”

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    Admittedly I only skimmed the article, but I think one of the major problems with a study like this is how broad “AI” really is. MS copilot is just bing search in a different form unless you have it hooked up to your organizations data stores, collaboration platforms, productivity applications etc. and is not really helpful at all. Lots of companies I speak with are in a pilot phase of copilot which doesn’t really show much value because it doesn’t have access to the organizations data because it’s a big security challenge. On the other hand, a chat bot inside of a specific product that is trained on that product specifically and has access to the data that it needs to return valuable answers to prompts that it can assist in writing can be pretty powerful.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    AI is better when I use it for item generation. It kicks ass at generating loot drops for encounters. All I really have to do is adjust item names if its not a mundane weapon. I do occasionally change an item completely cause its effects can get bland. But dont do much more than that.

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      That’s because you’re using AI for the correct thing. As others have pointed out, if AI usage is enforced (like in the article), chances are they’re not using AI correctly. It’s not a miracle cure for everything and should just be used when it’s useful. It’s great for brainstorming. Game development (especially on the indie side of things) really benefit from being able to produce more with less. Or are you using it for DnD?

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        I use it for tabletops lol I haven’t thrown any game dev ideas in there but that might be because I already have a backlog of projects cause I’m that guy.

  • dezmd@lemmy.world
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    The Upwork Research Institute

    Not exactly a panacea of rigorous scientific study.

        • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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          Replace joker for media and replace distract you from bank heist with convince you to hate AI then yes.

          • John Wilker@lemmy.world
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            Most folks don’t need an excuse to hate the internet enabled lie generator that “AI” is.

            • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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              No but most media moved quick to present every article to convince people why they should hate it. Pack mentality like when a popular kid starts spreading rumours about the new kid in class. People quickly adopt the common shared belief and most of those now are Media driven.

              AI is pretty cool new tech. Most people would have been mediocre to interested in it if it were not for corporate media telling us all why we need to hate it.

              I saw an article the other day about “people shitting on the beach” which was really an attack on immigrants. Media is now about forming opinions for us and we all accept it more than ever.

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                A majority of people have no use, nor want, AI. Just because you and a sub group of people like it, doesnt mean everyone else are idiots being misled by the media.

                Why exactly so you think the media wants people to hate AI anyways? Wouldnt big corporate gain from automating news writing?

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            Do convince us why we should like something which is a massive ecological disaster in terms of fresh water and energy usage.

            Feel free to do it while denying climate change is a problem if you wish.

            • Womble@lemmy.world
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              AI is a rounding error in terms of energy use. Creating and worldwide usage of chatGPT4 for a whole year comes out to less than 1% of the energy Americans burn driving in one day.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                I think I’ll go with Yale over ‘person on the Internet who ignored the water part.’

                https://e360.yale.edu/features/artificial-intelligence-climate-energy-emissions

                From that article:

                Estimates of the number of cloud data centers worldwide range from around 9,000 to nearly 11,000. More are under construction. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that data centers’ electricity consumption in 2026 will be double that of 2022 — 1,000 terawatts, roughly equivalent to Japan’s current total consumption.

                • Womble@lemmy.world
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                  Forgive me for not trusting an ariticle that says that AI will use a petawatt within the next two years. Either the person who wrote it doesnt understand the difference between energy and power or they are very sloppy.

                  Chat GPT took 50GWh to train source

                  Americans burn 355 million gallons of gasoline a day source and at 33.5 Kwh/gal source that comes out to 12,000GWh per day burnt in gasoline.

                  Water usage is more balanced, depending on where the data centres are it can either be a significant problem or not at all. The water doesnt vanish it just goes back into the air, but that can be problematic if it is a significant draw on local freshwater sources. e.g. using river water just before it flows into the sea, 0 issue, using a ground aquifer in a desert, big problem.

            • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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              I wrote this and feed it through chatGPT to help make it more readable. To me that’s pretty awesome. If I wanted I can have it written like an Elton John song. If that doesn’t convince you it’s fun and worth it then maybe the argument below could, or not. Either way I like it.


              I don’t think I’ll convince you, but there are a lot of arguments to make here.

              I heard a large AI model is equivalent to the emissions from five cars over its lifetime. And yes, the water usage is significant—something like 15 billion gallons a year just for a Microsoft data center. But that’s not just for AI; data centers are something we use even if we never touch AI. So, absent of AI, it’s not like we’re up in arms about the waste and usage from other technologies. AI is being singled out—it’s the star of the show right now.

              But here’s why I think we should embrace it: the potential. I’m an optimist and I love technology. AI bridges gaps in so many areas, making things that were previously difficult much easier for many people. It can be an equalizer in various fields.

              The potential with AI is fascinating to me. It could bring significant improvements in many sectors. Think about analyzing and optimizing power grids, making medical advances, improving economic forecasting, and creating jobs. It can reduce mundane tasks through personalized AI, like helping doctors take notes and process paperwork, freeing them up to see more patients.

              Sure, it consumes energy and has costs, but its potential is huge. It’s here and advancing. If we keep letting the media convince us to hate it, this technology will end up hoarded by elites and possibly even made illegal for the rest of us. Imagine having a pocket advisor for anything—mechanical issues, legal questions, gardening problems, medical concerns. We’re not there yet, but remember, the first cell phones were the size of a brick. The potential is enormous, and considering all the things we waste energy and resources on, this one is weighed against it benefits.

              • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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                For the curious, the message rewritten as lyrics for an Elton John song:

                (Verse 1) I don’t think I’ll convince you, but I’ve got a tale to tell, They say AI’s like five cars, burning fuel and raising hell. And the water that it guzzles, like rivers running dry, Fifteen billion gallons, under Microsoft’s sky.

                (Pre-Chorus) But it’s not just AI, oh, it’s every data node, Even if you never touch it, it’s a heavy load. We point fingers at AI, like it’s the star tonight, But let me tell you why I think it shines so bright.

                (Chorus) Oh, the potential, can’t you see, It’s the future calling, setting us free. Bridging gaps and making life easier, An equalizer, for you and me.

                (Verse 2) I’m an optimist, a techie at heart, AI could change the world, give us a brand new start. From power grids to medicine, it’s a helping hand, Economic dreams and jobs across the land.

                (Pre-Chorus) Yes, it drinks up energy, but what’s the price to pay? For the chance to see the mundane fade away. Imagine doctors with more time to heal, While AI handles notes, it’s a real deal.

                (Chorus) Oh, the potential, can’t you see, It’s the future calling, setting us free. Bridging gaps and making life easier, An equalizer, for you and me.

                (Bridge) If we let the media twist our minds, We’ll lose this gift to the elite, left behind. But picture this, a pocket guide for all, From car troubles to legal calls.

                (Chorus) Oh, the potential, can’t you see, It’s the future calling, setting us free. Bridging gaps and making life easier, An equalizer, for you and me.

                (Outro) First cell phones were the size of a brick, Now they’re magic in our hands, technology so quick. AI’s got the power, to change the way we live, So let’s embrace it now, there’s so much it can give.

                (Chorus) Oh, the potential, can’t you see, It’s the future calling, setting us free. Bridging gaps and making life easier, An equalizer, for you and me.

                (Outro) Oh, it’s the future, it’s the dream, AI’s the bright light, in the grand scheme.

                • rekorse@lemmy.world
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                  This is the stupidest shit ive seen yet.

                  We dont care about other data centers as much because we get a service in return that people want.

                  Most people didnt ask for or want AI, didnt agree to its costs, and now have to deal with it potentially taking their jobs.

                  But go ahead and keep posting idiotic and selfish posts about how you like it so much and its so fun and cool, look at my shitty song lyrics that make no fucking sense!

                  I’d say touch grass but the lyrics make me want to say touch instrument instead.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                Not being able to use your own words to explain something to me and having the thing that is an ecological disaster that also lies all the time explain it to me instead really only reinforces my point that there’s no reason to like this technology.

                • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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                  It is my own words. Wrote out the whole thing but I was never good with grammar and fully admit that often what I write is confusing or ambiguous. I can leverage chatgpt same way I would leverage spell check in word. I don’t see any problems there.

                  But if you don’t mind, I’m interested in the points discussed.