In the past year, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an inevitable part of everyone’s life. A lot of us use AI without even knowing. Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are examples of AI virtual assistants.
Confidence in the use of AI is high, and that is evident in the performance of AI-focused companies’ stocks, like Nvidia, Microsoft, C3.ai, Synopsys and more.
Made mainstream by OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November last year, Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, or video, based on its dataset. To gauge how Canadian professionals feel about the emerging technology, cloud-based software company Salesforce conducted a survey of 840 full-time Canadian professionals in marketing, sales, e-commerce and customer service roles between August 31st, 2023, and September 6th, 2023.
The survey revealed that Canadian professionals are embracing AI but have concerns about responsible use.
A majority of the surveyed Canadian professionals, 66 percent to be exact, believe that using AI technology will help their organization take better advantage of available data. Most (59 percent) also agree that it will help reduce team workload and increase productivity.
AI tools like Looka can help brands design a logo and identity, while Lumen5 can help Canadian professionals use AI to create videos for marketing and other business-related tasks. The general consensus is that AI use can be beneficial for the employee and employer; however, a majority, about 55 percent, said that they don’t have the required skills to use Generative AI effectively and safely, and 59 percent expect their employer to provide opportunities to learn how to use it.
Considering that a majority of employees believe they don’t have the skills to use Generative AI, 79 percent of the respondents believe that Generative AI introduces new security risks. One of the risks it poses is sharing false or biased information. For reference, Google’s Bard was sharing information that wasn’t factual within its first few days of being unveiled, which doesn’t inspire confidence in AI, especially considering the fact that Google has one of the largest datasets to train its AI.
Roughly 78 percent of respondents said that they believe Generative AI lacks human contextual knowledge, and 66 percent believe that there is bias in Generative AI output.
As part of the survey, 210 marketing professionals were questioned about their use of AI, and it is evident that marketers are embracing the technology. Almost half of the 210 respondents (49 percent) said that they are already leveraging Generative AI, with an additional 15 percent planning imminent adoption. They are using Generative AI for tasks such as writing copy, basic content creation, and inspiring creative thinking. They also anticipate saving time and dedicating their efforts to more strategic tasks with the help of Generative AI.
The survey reveals that Generative AI has a significant impact on many Canadian professionals but also comes with some challenges and risks. Canadian professionals are optimistic about the benefits of Generative AI, such as better data utilization, reduced workload, and increased productivity. However, they also face some challenges and risks, such as lack of skills, security concerns, and quality and accuracy issues.
Image credit: Shutterstock
Survey source: Salesforce
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