• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, June 28, 2018

Many people are ready to embrace artificial intelligence in the workplace and even are ready to take instructions from AI bots at work.

However, there appears to be a gap in how people use AI at home and at work. The majority (70%) of people are using some form of AI in their personal life but only 6% of human resource professionals are actively deploying AI, with 24% of employees using some form of AI at work, according to a new study.

The study comprised a survey of 1,300 human resources leaders and employees conducted by the workplace research firm Future Workplace for Oracle. The employees work across different sectors and in organizations of different sizes.

The survey found that the majority (77%) of people at work would trust voice instructions from AI bots at least sometimes, 16% rarely and 7% saying they never would.

Employees see some potential benefits of AI, including improving operational efficiencies (59%), enabling faster decision making (50%), significantly reducing cost (45%) and enabling better customer experience (37%).

HR leaders and employees both have concerns around artificial intelligence. Almost all (90%) HR leaders are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI as part of their job and 51% of employees have the same concern. Most (71%) employees say AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years.

Both HR leaders and employees agreed that a failure to adopt AI would have a negative consequence on their own careers.