GenAI being adopted at double the pace of PCs or internet

OpenAI’s large language model ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since its debut merely two years ago. Rivals have poured billions into building and scaling their own AI models as hundreds of millions of users adopt these tools.

According to a working paper, genAI has been adopted at a faster pace than personal computers or the internet. The technology has a 39.5% adoption rate after two years, handily beating the internet and PCs’s adoption rate of 20% in the same time period.

Researchers from the St. Louis Fed, Vanderbilt University and Harvard Kennedy School found that in August 2024, 39.4% of the U.S. population age 18-64 used genAI, with 32% using it at least once during the week they were surveyed.

The paper added that 28% percent of employed respondents used genAI at work, with 24.2% using it at least weekly, and 10.6% of employees reporting daily usage at work.

ChatGPT, the first to the race, is the most commonly used genAI program, the paper said.

Nearly one in three respondents said that they used generative AI outside of work, but only 6.4% used it outside of work every day, the paper said. Men are 9% more likely to use genAI at work and 7% more likely to use it at home.

While the researchers found that genAI use is most common in management, business, and computer occupations, with usage exceeding 40%, one in five one in five “blue collar” workers and one in five workers without a college degree use generative AI regularly on the job.

The paper estimates that between 0.5% and 3.5% of all work hours in the U.S. are currently being helped by genAI, translating to an increase in labor productivity of 0.125 and 0.875 percentage points at current levels of usage.

“However, this calculation assumes that small-scale studies are externally valid and should be treated with caution,” the researchers added.