Ireland is an international leader when it comes to workplace use of AI, according to a new report from recruitment platform, Indeed.
Almost three quarters (70 percent) of Irish workers surveyed said that they use artificial intelligence more than once per month in the course of their work.
This was followed by Australia in distant second place, where 48 percent of employees said the same.
Meanwhile, 46 percent of employees in Germany said that they use AI more than once in month in their jobs, followed by the United States at 43 percent; the United Kingdom at 41 percent; and France at 39 percent.
Japan came in last of the countries surveyed, with just 18 percent of employed workers admitting to AI use in their jobs.
The findings are contained in Indeed’s Workforce Insights Report, which surveyed approximately 80,000 workers across eight countries, including Ireland.
Personal AI use was found to be marginally higher among workers in each of the countries surveyed, with 72 percent of Irish workers saying that they used it personally, two percent higher than the figure given for professional use.
The research findings indicated that “employer encouragement” is “strongly associated with” AI adoption in the workplace by employees.
In Ireland, 37 percent of workers said that their employer offered high levels of encouragement to make use of AI, compared to just 12 percent in Japan.
Across each of the eight countries, workers whose employers encouraged AI use were more likely to use AI at work.
Ireland had the lowest proportion of “disengaged workers”, described as those who neither regularly use AI nor feel they need training on AI.
They represented just 16 percent of employed survey respondents in Ireland, compared to 40 percent in the US, which had the highest proportion.
According to the report, older workers were more likely to fall into this category, alongside workers in manual and production roles, while those in “knowledge-based occupations” were the least likely to be disengaged.
Workers who were disengaged regarding the use of AI were found to be 35-49 percent less likely to consider AI as a means of increasing workplace efficiency, while those who used it offered a contrary opinion.
In each of the eight countries surveyed, 81-96 percent of AI users reported saving at least one hour per day as a result of using AI.
In Ireland, half of users said they save three or more hours every day.
This was not a universal experience however, with one-fifth of AI users in the UK reporting that they weren’t saving any time at all.
As for what workers who made time savings said that they do with the time, the most common response was to take on other tasks and projects (21-45 percent).
Irish responses revealed that the majority used their freed-up time to improve their work-life balance (34 percent), followed by learning and professional development (26 percent) and innovation and creative work (25 percent).