More employed Americans have used the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT for work since last year, with the biggest increase among the younger portion of the workforce, according to a Pew Research poll released Tuesday.
The survey found that 31 percent of employed Americans between 18 and 29 surveyed in February said they have used ChatGPT for tasks at work, up from 12 percent who said the same last March.
The number of employed Americans who said they use ChatGPT for work decreased by age group. Twenty-one percent of employed adults aged 30 to 49 said they use it, up from 8 percent last year, and just 10 percent aged 50 and older said the same, up from only 4 percent last year.
Overall, the share of employed Americans who have used ChatGPT for work rose to double digits in the past year — reaching 20 percent based on the February survey, up from just 8 percent last March. But in general, most Americans still have not used ChatGPT, according to the survey.
Twenty-three percent of Americans said they have used ChatGPT. That amount is on the rise from July, when 18 percent said the same.
Use of ChatGPT has particularly spiked among younger adults. Forty-three percent of adults younger than 30 said they have used ChatGPT in the February survey, compared to 27 percent of adults 30 to 49, 17 percent of adults 50 to 64 and 6 percent of adults 65 and older.
As the tool becomes more popular, OpenAI has also faced scrutiny about risks it presents about the spread of misinformation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced questions about those risks and how it could impact the upcoming election when he testified before the Senate last year.
Pew found that 38 percent of Americans said they do not trust the information from ChatGPT about the 2024 presidential election. Only 2 percent said they trust it a “great deal” or “quite a bit” and 10 percent said they have “some” trust in ChatGPT.
The distrust of ChatGPT about information about the 2024 election was fairly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.
The survey also found that very few Americans, roughly 2 percent, said they have used the chatbot to find information about the presidential election.
The survey is based on data from the American Trends Panel created by Pew Research Center and was conducted from Feb. 7-11. A total of 10,133 panelists responded out of 11,117 who were sampled. The margin of error for the full sample of 10,133 respondents is 1.5 percentage points.
