AI has replaced work for 20% of full-time employees in the U.S., survey says

In a new survey released Thursday, a nonprofit AI research center found that half of American adults used AI in the past week, either for personal or work use, with 20% of full-time workers saying that AI has taken over parts of their job.

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The poll, conducted by Ipsos in partnership with Epoch AI — a leading nonprofit focused on data-driven research about artificial intelligence’s development and impact — surveyed 2,000 American adults about how and when they use AI. While the survey found that AI replaced some tasks at work, 15% of full-time workers said that they had started doing new tasks at work that they wouldn’t have done without AI services, with a plus or minus 2.5% margin of error.

Caroline Falkman Olsson, who helped lead the research for Epoch AI, said the results confirmed broad assumptions about AI’s growing impact in the workplace. “When we actually look at what people report for their AI usage, we do see augmentation and automation effects,” Olsson told NBC News, cautioning that more granular research is required to understand the exact tasks that are being impacted. “But we need to figure out how people’s actual workplaces and work tasks are changing.”

Epoch AI was founded in 2021 as a volunteer effort to gather and analyze data about trends in AI development. Since the research center gained attention in 2022 studying the amount of computation power leading AI companies used to train their models, Epoch AI has expanded to study the price of AI services, the construction of data centers around the world and the types of chips used to develop AI models.

The latest survey was conducted from March 3 to 5 via Ipsos’ online polling platform. Among adults who used AI in the past week, the research found that almost 50% used AI between two and five days per week. However, the survey also showed that most people (62.5%) only performed 1 to 2 quick tasks using AI on their most intense day of AI usage, in contrast to the roughly 6% of respondents who used AI heavily.

Nicholas Miailhe, an AI policy leader and expert at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, an international AI initiative comprising 46 countries and the European Union, said the results should be a wake-up call for workers and policymakers. “When 1 in 5 workers say AI is already replacing parts of their job, we can start talking about labor market restructuring happening in real time,” he told NBC News.

“The fact that replacement seems to be outpacing augmentation should draw our attention: the policy window to shape how AI transforms work is probably closing faster than most governments realize.”

The survey also found that roughly half of American adults who used AI for work in the past week only used their own personal subscriptions or free versions of AI services — instead of subscriptions purchased by their workplace.

In addition, the survey addressed the growing use of AI agents, or AI systems that can conduct independent tasks. The survey found overall agent usage rates are still low, though the technology has only gained widespread industry attention in the past few months. Eight percent (plus or minus 1.5%) of AI users had engaged an AI agent in the past week, compared to 49% (plus or minus 1.6%) of AI users using AI systems to search the web.

Renan Araujo, director of programs at the nonprofit Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, said the agent findings were notable: “One in 12 Americans has used an autonomous AI agent, a software that not just answers questions but takes actions on your behalf,” Araujo told NBC News. “This capability was not available two years ago, and it’s striking to see its usage grow so quickly.”

The Epoch poll also examined how American adults were putting AI to use. The survey found that many adults who used AI in the past week had used the services to look up information or recommendations (80%), write or edit text (59%) and brainstorm ideas (53%).

From the sample of roughly 2,000 adults, ChatGPT was the most popular AI service (used by 31%), followed by Google’s Gemini (21%) and Microsoft’s Copilot (10.5%).

Epoch’s survey comes on the heels of new reports from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley addressing the growing specter of AI in the labor market.

Economists from Goldman Sachs published new findings this week that AI is eliminating around 16,000 jobs per month when accounting for both AI-caused automation and augmentation. The bank’s researchers had previously estimated in March that AI can potentially automate tasks that consume around 25% of all work hours.