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70% of employees are happy to delegate work to AI, according to new Microsoft report

Fears of AI replacing human labor may be a thing of the past.
Written by Sabrina Ortiz, Editor
robot arm moving packages
Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images

The release of ChatGPT in November really highlighted how far AI models have come. With the ability to write, code, create businesses, and more, there is no doubt that AI chatbots are capable of doing human functions. 

With AI chatbot's impressive capabilities comes the fear that AI will take over human jobs. But a recent report indicates that rather than fearing the replacement of jobs by AI, people are actually welcoming it.

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Microsoft's Work Trend Index 2023 Report surveyed 31,000 people from 31 countries, analyzing Microsoft 365 productivity signals and labor trends from LinkedIn Economic Graph to better understand the impact of AI on the workforce. 

According to the survey, while 49% of respondents expressed fear of losing their jobs to AI, 70% stated that they would delegate as much work as possible to AI in order to reduce their workload. 

"[It's] fascinating that people are more excited about AI rescuing them from burnout than they are worried about it eliminating their jobs," said organizational psychology professor and author, Adam Grant in the report.

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The employees would be open to receiving assistance in all different sectors including administrative tasks (76%), analytical (79%), creative work (73%), finding the right information (86%), summarizing their meetings and action items (80%), and even planning their day (77%). 

The report also evaluated how leaders viewed AI in terms of reducing headcount. 

When asked what they would most value about AI in the workplace, only 16% of leaders responded with reducing headcount, and nearly double (31%) responded with increasing employee productivity. 

Microsoft chart
Microsoft

The results of this report may help ease tensions of job security in the world of rapid AI developments. 

Also: Meet the post-AI developer: More creative, more business-focused

However, other potential risks involving the use of AI still prevail, including whether it has the potential to cause world doom

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