AI Usage Has Exploded and Could be Key to Better Work Relationships

Patrick Moorhead: The Six Five is on the road here at the HP Garage. It’s literally the founding location for Silicon Valley. It says that on the plaque. I saw it. Dan, this is great. HP Imagine, we’re here in the HP garage just talking about innovation, consumer, commercial experiences.

Daniel Newman: Yeah. This goes back to the late-1930s when you were a teenager, but all joking aside, it’s so cool to be in here as someone that actually found their passion for technology in the audio space, seeing the old vacuum tubes, these oscillators, the technology that’s in here, you see how much things have changed, and in some ways though, when you look at things like connectivity and copper, how much some things have stayed the same.

Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, technology has changed from the 1920s to where we are today, but also the relationship with workers and the company has changed. Even back in the 1970s when I started, I’m just kidding, 1990s when I started my career, the relationship pretty much was one directional. The company told you what to do, you did it. If you didn’t like it, you could leave. You could be successful somewhere else. There were a lot of layoffs going on. The economy wasn’t great, but today’s very different. We’ve got five, six generations of people in the workforce and you’re having this relationship with them. You have to convince them sometimes that this is what they should be doing. So that relationship matters and the tech matters to influence that relationship, and it’s going to be a real exciting conversation. We have Anneliese from HP. We are going to talk about the work index study that you created that talks about this relationship between company, employee and tech. Thanks, by the way, welcome to the show.

Anneliese Olson: Thank you.

Patrick Moorhead: Sorry, I’m getting really excited about this.

Anneliese Olson: No, I’m very excited to be here and I’m always excited for an opportunity to come to the Garage. I’ve been here many times. It’s got great roots here, and as you said, it’s all related to getting work done, technology, evolution, and solving customer problems. So, excited.

Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, for sure.

Daniel Newman: Yeah. Well, speaking of solving customer problems and the worker revolution, AI is a massive inflection. We were at this big change in history, and Pat you pointed out a little bit about how the work has changed, and I sometimes call it symmetry within work and how companies need employees more. Sometimes employees need companies more, but AI is sort of going to be, in many ways, a great equalizer and also an exponential creator. I would love to get a little bit of your take. We’ve spent a ton of time studying this, but you did a big study. What are you seeing as benefits and as the opportunities that AI is providing to the knowledge worker?

Anneliese Olson: Well, in this work relationship index, this is the second year we’ve done this, talked to over 16,000 professionals, both knowledge workers and business leaders, and we’ve seen a surge in the use of AI in that base. A lot of different statistics out there. Last year, 28% were using AI. Now 62% are using AI, and those 62% are seeing a lot of benefits in the way that they’re doing their work. 77% of them are actually enjoying work more when they’re using AI. 82% say that it actually makes their jobs easier, which is a big one. I think a lot of us have learned and are practicing around productivity for sure. And even more than two-thirds believe that AI will help them with more work-life balance, and so when we put these pieces together and you think about growth and utilization and fulfillment, just on a day-to-day basis, we’re starting to see some green shoots in terms of AI and how people are using that.

Patrick Moorhead: By the way, I love the term green shoots, if you’ve been hearing it more in the context of AI, typically around where you’re seeing an uptick or big value happening. So this is a twofer here. So for those people who might not be familiar with the work relationship index, let me just talk a little bit about what this is and then those are some great factoids you talked about before, but does it go up with AI?

Anneliese Olson: Yes. So the relationship index has a couple of different factors around skills, tools, leadership, workspaces, and fulfillment in terms of these metrics, in terms of how people measure and the relationship even between those. And it does matter and make a difference. So when people use AI they’re 10 basis points higher in every single question.

Patrick Moorhead: My gosh.

Anneliese Olson: Both across business leaders and knowledge workers. And so it definitely is making the intersection of these pieces come together in terms of how people are feeling about their work and their relationship to it.

Patrick Moorhead: Okay. I want to make sure I get this right. I don’t want to stretch the research to answer some question or thought that I had though, but are you telling me that if employees feel that AI can make their job, they can do a better job at work and maybe they can become even more marketable, it’s incumbent then upon businesses to have the right tools and the right training where an employer could actually become a better place to work in the eyes of a prospective employee and a current employee. Does that fit with you?

Anneliese Olson: It definitely does. Seven out of 10 business leaders and seven out of 10 knowledge workers agree that when they’re using AI, they see that they have more career growth, more potential, as well as all the productivity benefits. And so when we see and look at those who don’t use AI, they cite a couple of things. One is they’re unsure of what tools to use or how and when to use them. They come back and say, gosh, it makes me a little nervous, is AI going to take my job? That comes up with maybe a third of participants or so, but the big one is over 65% look to their employers to provide the proper training for AI.

They understand it’s important, but they haven’t seen it yet, and so it’s a huge opportunity for employers to come back to their workforces, bring them along this journey. We’re seeing across all generations, in fact, that everybody is using AI more year-on-year. More people are getting fulfillment out of that. This is a lifelong learning activity even for me, I’m learning new things every time. My own sales organization, all of the partner business managers have taken AI master classes we’re doing with channel partners, and it doesn’t stop there. It’s going to be an ongoing journey, and we really need to keep upscaling the workforce so that they can get the maximum benefit out of it.

Patrick Moorhead: Interesting.

Daniel Newman: Yeah, there’s no question about it. We’re going to sort of have this interesting inflection because a lot of this rising generations are very self-starting when it comes to the utilization of technology. They’re trying it. I know that both you and I talk all the time about how we bounce between four or five, six different LLMs, and of course we know the real honeypot is when you can take an LLM and combine it with your proprietary data. That’s where we get a lot of value. And then of course, companies though, just in the cybersecurity era have this big responsibility to teach safety, responsibility and privacy.

I think there’s kind of this mesh of where the people will innovate a lot if you just give them access to the tools, kind of like the YouTube training economy. I always joke, I learned to play the guitar, watched YouTube, but at the same time, companies have to make sure, keep the data safe, create the right habits, knowing the difference between building and using AI to enhance content versus plagiarism in fact. These are things where I think companies have a great opportunity to help, and it sounds to me like it can also really drive the experience if the two, the employee and the company work together to drive that.

Anneliese Olson: Yeah, the potential will be unlocked when employees are fulfilled and productive and making it easier to do more deep value work, and companies see the benefit in terms of maximizing their resources and ultimately growing their businesses as well.

Daniel Newman: Anneliese, this is a really fascinating study. I can speak for both Patrick and myself. We do a lot of research on this topic and we’re watching the extraordinary boom. It’s not just a boom in new devices. It’s not just a boom in GPUs. It is a boom in culture. It’s a boom in productivity, and it’s going to really change the world. It’s going to change work. And thank you so much for bringing your insights to The Six Five.

Anneliese Olson: You bet. Thanks so much.

Daniel Newman: Got it.

Daniel Newman: We are here at HP Imagine we are in the HP Garage in beautiful Palo Alto, California. This is where the Silicon Valley began. Hit that subscribe button. Join us for all of our coverage here at HP’s Event. We appreciate you so much tuning in. We’ll see you later.