LinkedIn Finds Professionals Are Hesitant Yet Excited About the AI Era at Work

Published on Sep 12, 2023 Categories: Research, Data and insights

The era of AI has begun, and today’s professionals have mixed feelings about it. LinkedIn recently conducted a global survey of more than 29,00 professionals to better understand how professionals are feeling about AI in the workplace. The findings might surprise you:

Nine out of 10 professionals are excited to embrace AI, but half admit they need to know more.

For many, the potential benefits of AI are in sight, with 58% of global professionals believing that AI will significantly change the way they work in the next year.
Most are ready for the AI era, with 84% of global professionals believing AI will help their career progression.
Some have already started using AI – 46% of global professionals are using AI in their jobs right now, while 36% are testing generative AI tools like ChatGPT. And the number of job postings that talk about GPT or ChatGPT has gone up 21x since November 2022.

AI is seen as a way to unlock fresh opportunities for work-life balance and skill enhancement, not just for tech pros.

45% of global professionals believe AI will make their jobs easier.
Many believe that AI will open up more free time, which workers say they’ll use to improve work-life balance (45%) and learn new skills (39%), while 44% of professionals plan to use AI to focus on tasks they enjoy more. 30% also say if they had more time back they’d use it to strengthen their professional networks.
Recent LinkedIn data (Preparing the Workforce for Generative AI) found that 84% of US LinkedIn members are in jobs where generative AI could be used to automate at least a quarter of repetitive tasks and increase productivity.

But many are AI Anxious, with more than one-third worried about falling behind on AI at work. Even more interesting, 56% say they don't know how to use AI at work.

Half (49%) of professionals globally are worried they should know more about AI than they do, and 39% are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of change AI may bring to their jobs in the future.
In fact, nearly 40% (39%) of global professionals have admitted to pretending they know more about AI to seem ‘in the know’ in front of teammates.
Problem solving, strategic thinking and time management are the top skills professionals think will become more important as AI tools become more widely used at work.
According to LinkedIn’s recent Future of Work: AI at Work report, 92% of US executives agree, noting that people skills are more important than ever.

As workers globally look to learn all they can on AI – we’ve already seen a 65% year-over-year increase in learning hours for the top 100 AI-related courses on LinkedIn – now starting this week LinkedIn Learning is making the 10 most popular AI courses free through December 15, 2023 (and has 300+ AI courses for Premium subscribers).

Data/Methodology

LinkedIn August 2023 survey of more than 29,000 global professionals across the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, France, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Italy, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, UAE and Japan.