Workers and business leaders have different views on GenAI uses

Research from Experian and TechUK has found less than a third of employees are aware their employer is using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), despite 93% of business heads saying that they are.

The survey of 1,250 UK business professionals – including 250 CEOs and business leaders of large companies with 250 to 1,000 employees, looked at attitudes and behaviours towards GenAI.

The survey reported that the majority (80%) of the CEOs and business leaders polled see data analysis as the primary use for GenAI technology. Customer experience was the second-highest use case for GenAI (70%) among the business leaders polled, while content creation (66%) was the third-highest.

When looking at the figures for workers, just over half (51%) of employees said GenAI’s main benefit was in grammar and spell-checking, while 50% said GenAI was helping them improve admin tasks and desk research. Only 45% of employees said they were using GenAI for data analysis.

In the executive summary of the report, Julian David, CEO of TechUK, discussed the opportunities of GenAI. “Realising its full potential is not without its challenges,” he said. “As this report shows, there is a gap between leadership and employees in their perception and use of GenAI.

“While executives see opportunities in areas like data analysis, employees report lower engagement and awareness,” said David. “Therefore, it is crucial to establish robust governance mechanisms to support responsible deployment and identify the skills and training necessary for the workforce to leverage this technology effectively.”

Matthew Fryer, Experian Consumer Services managing director of commercial, analytics and AI, said: “Identifying use cases and opportunities for leveraging AI and GenAI for your specific business is critical.”

Over the past 18 months, Experian has embedded AI and machine learning into its products. These include Experian Boost, the Aperture suite and the Ascend Technology Platform.
 
Experian has also developed a use case portal for all employees to contribute potential use cases with company-wide visibility. 

Fryer said the portal has enabled Experian to prioritise and allocate resources swiftly, by helping the business align its platform capabilities to create the most value, whether this is in existing products and processes or new innovations. “Having a faster ‘proof of concept’ to build processes and manage risk, particularly around common use case themes such as coding productivity, is vital,” he added.

While there will be evolving best practice playbooks, Experian said organisations can use common themes and best practices as a starting point, which can be tailored to specific business requirements.

“You need to be mindful not to look at GenAI in isolation and, where relevant, consider how it can be integrated with your machine learning, data and automation technologies,” it said. “By bringing these elements together, you can enable further business growth and typically increased value to stakeholders.”