Eighteen months after the first major generative AI tool, ChatGPT, entered the market, a majority of the public is still undecided on what the impact of generative AI will be and are unsure whether generative AI will make their own lives and society better or worse, revealed an online survey by the Reuters Institute focused on understanding if and how people used generative artificial intelligence (AI) and what they think about its application across six countries including the USA, UK, Argentina, Denmark, France and Japan.
Researchers have also found that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was by far the most popular AI tool although so many other companies have introduced rival products since November 2022 when ChatGPT took the world by storm.
Anywhere between 19 and 30 per cent of the online population in the six countries surveyed have not heard of any of the most popular generative AI tools, and while many have tried using various of them, only a very small minority are, at this stage, frequent users.
Going forward, some use will be driven by people seeking out and using stand-alone generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, but it seems likely that much of it will be driven by a combination of professional adaptation, through products used in the workplace, and the introduction of more generative AI-powered elements into platforms already widely used in people’s private lives, including social media and search engines, as illustrated with the recent announcements of much greater integration of generative AI into Google Search.
Asked if they think that generative AI will make their life better or worse, a plurality in four of the six countries covered answered ‘better’, but many have no strong views, and a significant minority believe it will make their life worse. People’s expectations when asked whether generative AI will make society better or worse are generally more pessimistic.
Reuters survey
Looking at journalism and news media more closely, the researchers, Dr Richard Fletcher and Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, have found that many believe generative AI is already relatively widely used for many different tasks, but that they are, in most cases, not convinced these uses of AI make news better – they mostly expect it to make it cheaper to produce.
Expectations around what generative AI might mean for society was also more varied across the six countries that were covered. In two, there were more who expected it will make society worse than better. In another two, there are as many pessimists as optimists, and in the final two, more respondents expect generative AI products will make society better than expect them to make society worse.
These differences may also partly reflect the current situation societies find themselves in, and whether people think AI can fundamentally change the direction of those societies. Across a range of measures, in some countries people were generally more optimistic, but in others more pessimistic.
ChatGPT is by far the most widely recognised generative AI product – around 50 per cent of the online population in the six countries surveyed have heard of it. It is also by far the most widely used generative AI tool in the six countries surveyed.
ChatGPT is by far the most widely recognised generative AI product – around 50 per cent of the online population in the six countries surveyed have heard of it. It is also by far the most widely used generative AI tool in the six countries surveyed. However, frequent use of ChatGPT is rare, with just one per cent using it on a daily basis in Japan, rising to two per cent in France and the UK, and seven per cent in the USA. Many of those who say they have used generative AI have used it just once or twice, and it is yet to become part of people’s routine internet use.
The survey also concluded that younger people are much more likely to use generative AI products on a regular basis. Averaging across all six countries, 56 per cent of 18–24s have stated they have used ChatGPT at least once, compared to 16 per cent of those aged 55 and over.
On the business front, generative AI products have made news since November 2022 with all major IT giants in the race to outsmart the other and capture the multi-billion-dollar market that is still expected to change the way we live for ever. At least, that’s what the tech gurus continue to bet on.