Training people is always a two-way street: a look at what’s been learned in the training room about who is using Gen AI, and how.
If you lurk in certain corners of LinkedIn or Twitter (now known as X), you’d think that everyone and their dog are using generative AI, all day, every day.
But a graphic that’s been doing the rounds on those very platforms says otherwise.
Here’s that image, with the grey blocks representing the proportion of the world’s population who have never used AI and the coloured blocks representing those who have, in varying ways:
The image (see my due diligence on it at the bottom of the blog post) appears to have first found the light of day in a LinkedIn post by Damian Player, who runs an AI-first media company (and who appears to think that “boomers above the age of 35” know nothing about AI).
And then the graphic “went viral”
This whole thing may have lingered on a bit and then been forgotten – but Steven Bartlett (of Diary of a CEO fame) picked it up about a week after Player’s post and shared it with his three million LinkedIn followers. That meant it was being seen everywhere (or everywhere on LinkedIn anyway). This is what Bartlett said about the graphic:
- 2,500 dots for 8.1 billion humans.
- The colour shows the most advanced AI interaction that person has ever had.
- Look at all that grey. That’s 6.8 billion people who have never used AI. Ever. In any form.
- The green strip at the bottom? 1.3 billion free chatbot users.
- The tiny yellow sliver? The 15-25 million who actually pay for it.
- And that single red dot you can barely see? That’s the 2-5 million people using AI for coding and development.
What does all that mean?
My summary: very, very few human beings are using AI’s advanced capabilities, very few are paying for it and a vast majority of people are living lives in which generative AI features not at all.
It’s absolutely no surprise that many billions of people don’t use generative AI – you’d need electricity and internet access for that, and much of the developing world has neither of those things.
But in the small corner of humanity where AI is in fact in use, colleague Anne Taylor and I have been doing some training. Our trainees (and I suspect the bulk of people in the green section of the graphic) do have access to the internet, and are knowledge workers of various kinds and from varying levels of seniority.
Over the course of six months, and in talking to dozens of people, we’ve gathered some insights into the ways people use AI, and the things they do and don’t understand about it. Our observations:
People are using AI
In every group we’ve trained, at least 90% of people are already using AI, on a spectrum from small and personal tasks to mission-critical business work. Almost everyone is doing this using the free version of ChatGPT.
Some of the AI uses we’ve come across again and again:
- I use it to help my children with their homework.
- I get recipes or identify plants.
- I improve or alter pictures I’ve taken.
- I use it to help me with personal problems, or to help me with personal projects.
- I ask it questions about health issues.
- I’m not confident about my written English so I get it to help me write reports and emails (this is from second-language English speakers).
- I make presentations.
- I analyse business reports and contracts, especially legal documents. If I understand a contract, it saves time when talking to the lawyers.
People are curious about what Gen AI tools “know” about them
In exercises in which workshop participants prompt an AI tool to do a task, they are fascinated to see what responses other people get, and want to know why responses are different (or not). Generally, there seems to be little understanding of the ways in which AI tools “learn” things about users.
People are not using AI tools to their full capacity
Even technically clued-up people who have been using Gen AI tools like ChatGPT for ages have never looked at the settings, or don’t know about the different models, or have never clicked on the various options in a chat response field (the microphone for instance).
People are worried about the effect of AI on society and the environment
Again and again, people say that they worry that easy access to generative AI will make them or their colleagues lazy. They are concerned that human understanding and knowledge are under threat, or that young people are entering the workplace with only superficial knowledge of their subjects. People are also aware of and worried about the demands that AI may be making on the earth’s scarce resources. And all the parents we spoke to are concerned about their children’s futures.
Read: Gen AI and climate change – what’s the story?
What about the jobs? Artificial intelligence and social responsibility
People know that AI makes mistakes – but they don’t understand that there are privacy risks
Across all our trainees, there is an understanding that AI makes mistakes. People will often give their own examples of being told something incorrect by a Gen AI tool.
But when we talk about privacy risks, people are less sure. There seems to be an assumption that a tool like ChatGPT is the same as Google (to which we have all been giving personal data for years) or that the tool is so big that one individual’s input is invisible.
Spoiler alert: we all should be thinking carefully about privacy in our use of AI tools.
Read my full blog post about that here: Privacy and Generative AI – what you need to know
The big picture
Wherever you sit on the Gen AI spectrum, there is a bigger picture. If you are someone who feels overwhelmed by it all, know that you’re not alone. On the other side of the AI swimming pool, know that if you are a power user, that makes you part of a very small minority of people in the bigger scheme of things.
(Small rant: If some “boomer” you know is unaware of Gen AI, that doesn’t make them an object of ridicule; it means they are normal. I know Gen Zs who refuse even to look at AI tools. This is not an age thing, people.)
And if you are an employer who thinks that your staff are immune from the hype or that they haven’t cottoned on to the uses of Gen AI, you are living dangerously. Our training experience is that people are using these tools, no matter what, and that they are doing that with varied levels of understanding of what they are doing. This is not a moment to put your head in the sand and hope for the best. Anne and I would (of course) recommend you invest in training – but at the very least you should be talking to your staff about what is actually going on.
In the end, despite the fear, hype and overwhelm, I feel hopeful about how AI will impact us all over the long haul. We’ve found that – given the knowledge and the confidence to use Gen AI safely and responsibly – people light up. They get excited about what they might be able to do with the tools.
The sheer common sense and willingness to learn new things that abound in our training rooms leaves me feeling sane and centred, time after time.
MY DUE DILIGENCE ON THAT IMAGE
In the comments on the original Damian Player post, many people asked for the source of the graphic or its underlying data. While Player himself did not reply, other commenters pointed to this link: 75 Years of AI Adoption. That link takes you to this interactive graphic:
Again, no clue as to who made this graphic, or when. It does have a list of reliable-looking sources below it, none of them clickable.
The accuracy of the actual data is broken down in a blog post (with unlinked sources) on Petar, a website offering “coaching, Vedic counselling, speaking, or AI consulting”. It took a bit of digging but the author of the blog post appears to be Petar Markovic, who concludes that the original graphic is mostly accurate but also an oversimplification. [Warning: the website’s home page has a graphic that flickers in a really annoying way.]
Note: I am usually careful about checking whether I have the right to use pictures or not, and in giving credit. But both these images have no visible source and have been widely shared on social media. I am sharing them in the belief that they are in the public domain. If that’s not the case, please let me know!
Main picture: Nikhilesh Boppana, Unsplash
Previous Sensible Guide articles
Privacy and Generative AI – what you need to know – I’ve done some research on the question of privacy and Generative AI. My findings and thoughts…
Which AI tool to use? Start by playing – Knowing which AI tool to use can be hard to figure out – there are apparently 10,500 tools out there. Here’s a place to start…
Let’s go back to Gen AI basics – The Sensible Guide to Content and AI has covered a lot of ground. To recap: a list of Gen AI basic concepts.
If any of this is relevant to your work…
You might find one of these useful: