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Fin24 reports that SA workers are among the world’s most bullish about the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and, by international standards, have expressed high confidence and low anxiety about the disruptive technology.
This is based on data from a worldwide Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey about generative AI in the workplace. The survey revealed that respondents in global south countries were more optimistic about generative AI, while workers in the global north were generally more circumspect. Workers regularly using generative AI tools reported huge increases in their productivity, but were also the most convinced that their jobs might not exist in the next decade. Over 13,000 people in a host of different countries were interviewed for the report. The respondents represented a diverse range of ages, seniority, industries, and company size. South African workers, together with other developing nations, expressed a more positive sentiment toward generative AI than many more developed nations. In a poll, 46% of South African respondents expressed significant positive sentiment regarding their confidence in generative AI. This placed SA behind India, Brazil, the Middle East, and Nigeria on the ranking. Partly this reflected the optimism of youth. Respondents from Japan, the US, Belgium, Brazil and the Netherlands had the most negative sentiment in the study, with the highest "anxiety" rating in the study. Only 17% of South Africans ranked their sentiment on generative AI in the most negative categories. Around 58% of the survey respondents across the world who use generative AI tools said that the technology was saving them more than five hours in an average work week.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by William Brederode at Fin24
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