As top executives from across the country descend on Utah for the annual Accelerate 17 conference at Snowbird Ski Resort, researchers at InsideSales have been hard at work on a new project: Uncovering the real “State of Artificial Intelligence”.
Over the past year, the buzz around AI has reached a fever pitch, with some of the biggest names in tech entering the fray. At InsideSales, we’re proud to have been leading the charge on AI-fueled sales acceleration technologies right out of the gate. But we know our customers are some of the most progressive, strategic brands in the country. How does the rest of the nation–and the world–stack up?
We ran a poll of consumers in the U.S. and U.K. to get a multinational pulse on how people view, interact with, and envision a future shaped by, AI.
We’ll soon publish a full report on our findings in the first annual State of AI Index. Until then, we wanted to offer a sneak peek at three early results that have come in and that represent some of the themes emerging around this complex topic.
- Today, AI at Work is Largely Untapped.
Every day, we interact with AI–whether we know it or not. But for many of us who wake up in the comfort of a home where the temperature is regulated by Nest, navigate to work via Waze and settle down at night with some entertainment recommended to us by Netflix, there’s a big gap during the day where we don’t interact with AI, and that’s at work. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents in the U.S. report that they never interact with AI in the workplace. So much for all that hype.
- We (still) don’t trust AI with “human” tasks.
In the 49 years since moviegoers were introduced to the dubious HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, AI still seems to have an image problem, but it’s got some interesting nuance to it. Based on the survey, it seems people in the U.S. are more likely to trust AI with complex, even life-threatening tasks than they are with tasks that seem to require empathy and human connection: People are more than three times as likely to trust a self-driving car than automated hiring.
- We’re not sure if we want AI in the workplace.
Some of us do. But as much as people are able to see the potential for AI to create new innovations and opportunities for businesses to succeed, most people–almost three quarters of respondents in the U.S.–are either undecided or dislike the idea of AI at work.
As we prepare for three days of fascinating presentations from some of the country’s foremost leaders and personalities and passionate discussions about the future of sales technology and the way we do business in general, we look forward to rolling out the full findings of this study in the weeks to come. Stay tuned!