When we first started hearing about generative
AI everywhere, the story was pretty clear, wasn't
it? This amazing new tool for, well, for corporations.
Yeah, absolutely. We all pictured, you know,
businesses getting huge productivity boosts,
coders, marketers, analysts, making everything
faster. Using it as a purely professional thing.
But that picture, it's almost completely flipped
now. We're diving into this really fascinating
analysis today. They looked at how 700 million
people are actually using ChatGBT in the real
world. And the results are? Well, they're pretty
surprising. Yeah, profound is a good word. It
turns out, for almost three -quarters of users,
AI isn't really that corporate tool. It's more
like a personal friend or a tutor, maybe even
a travel agent sometimes. Welcome to the deep
dive. This study gives us this incredible window
into what 700 million people are doing with AI.
And it shows it's changing not just what we get
done, but really how we do things, how we learn,
how we edit our own writing. Even how we ask
for advice on really personal stuff, like relationships.
So our mission today is to unpack these real
habits. We want to look at the shifts, especially
in professional skills, and... Maybe touch on
some of the risks. There's this one big ethical
flag they raised called decision laundering that
we definitely need to talk about. Okay, let's
get into it. Where do we start? That personal
takeover seems huge. It really is. So finding
number one, the split. Only about 27 % of all
the chat interactions they analyzed were actually
for work. Just over a quarter, wow. Which means...
The vast majority, 73%, is all personal stuff.
People exploring hobbies, learning new things,
managing their daily lives. It's become this
kind of ultimate personal assistant. And it happens
so fast. As Sadi mentioned, just a year ago,
personal use was around 53%. Right. From barely
half to almost three quarters in just 12 months.
That's a really rapid, fundamental shift in how
we're integrating this tech into our lives. So
why? Why are we suddenly outsourcing so much
of our curiosity and daily admin? to an AI? Well,
a few reasons probably. The AI feels like this
incredibly knowledgeable friend who's always
there, 3 a .m., no problem. And crucially, there's
no judgment. Ah, that's a big one. Yeah. If you
feel kind of silly asking a coworker, what exactly
is inflation again? Or, you know, how do I fix
this leaky faucet? Uh, the AI just answers. No
eye rolling. It takes away that social friction,
that little bit of anxiety about asking something
basic, and I guess the corporate side plays into
it too. companies being nervous about data leaks.
Definitely. There's still a lot of hesitation
about employees pasting sensitive company info
into these public tools. So that naturally pushes
some usage towards personal accounts, personal
questions at home. OK, so what are people actually
doing in that big 73 % slice? What are the main
personal uses? The top three are pretty foundational.
First is just seeking information. But people
want direct answers, not just a page of links
like Google gives you. Right, like, give me a
quick healthy recipe that doesn't use chicken.
not here are 10 recipe blogs. Exactly. Second
is writing, helping with emails to friends, social
media captions, maybe even writing a little poem
or something, polishing personal communication.
And third is practical guidance, just straightforward
how -to questions. How do I plan a three -day
trip to Paris? Or how do I change a bike tire?
That kind of thing. It really feels like we're
offloading that initial. Drudgery the basic research
phase of figuring things out. Yeah, which brings
up a really interesting point How does this massive
shift towards personal AI use? Change how we
even think about productivity day -to -day. That's
a good question I guess I mean these productivity
isn't just about work output anymore. It's also
about learning things faster in your personal
life We're just handling those mundane life tasks
more efficiently. So you have more brain space
for other things Yeah, basically freeing up time
by handling the small stuff faster. Okay, so
let's pivot back then. What about the 27 % that
is for work? What's happening inside that professional
bubble? Right. So within that 27%, the biggest
chunk, maybe unsurprisingly, about 40 % of all
work -related tasks have something to do with
writing. Makes sense. Lots of emails, reports,
memos. But here's the really interesting twist.
When people use AI for writing at work, Two -thirds
of the time, about 66%, they're asking it to
edit or change text they've already written themselves.
So they're not just saying, write me a report
on Q3 sales. Exactly. They're not asking for
new stuff from a blank slate nearly as often.
It seems people have caught on pretty quickly
to what some call AI slop. AI slop? OK, define
that. It's that, you know, generic, robotic -sounding
text the AI spits out if you ask it to write
something complex from scratch. It often likes
real context, sounds bland, it usually needs
a ton of editing anyway. Right. It doesn't sound
like you or understand the nuances of your specific
situation. Precisely. So the smarter approach,
the one people seem to be adopting, is you write
the first draft, you put your own knowledge,
your tone, your context in there. You anchor
it. Yeah, exactly. And then you ask the AI to
act like an editor, clean it up, make it more
concise, check the grammar, maybe make it sound
more professional. You provide the core, the
AI provides the polish. They give some examples
in the study, right? Like, for a sick email?
Yeah, a good one. Instead of just write a sick
email, the user drafts something simple like,
hey boss, woke up feeling rough, can't come in,
we'll check email later. Then they feed that
to the AI and say, make this sound more professional
and formal. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
It's using the AI's strength refining language
without relying on it for the core message or
context. I have to say, I still rattle with prompt
drift myself sometimes, you know. Trying to get
the AI to generate exactly what I want from scratch.
It can be tough to keep it on track. Using it
as an editor after I've written the main points
feels, well, way more effective usually. Yeah,
it avoids that whole battle of trying to steer
its massive generalization engine. What else
are people doing for work? Well, summarizing
is big. Taking a long report, say 20 pages, and
asking for the key bullet points, that's super
useful. Oh yeah, definitely. Brainstorming, too.
Like, give me 10 creative ideas for a new coffee
shop. getting that initial list to react to.
What about programming? I thought that would
be higher. Surprisingly low, actually. Only about
4 .2 % in these general chats. The thinking is
that coders are probably using more specialized
tools, like GitHub Cotilot, that are built right
into their workflow. Ah, OK. That makes sense.
Different tools for different jobs. So if the
key professional skill is becoming editing and
refining AI output rather than just pure creation,
what does that mean for human creativity? especially
in that first crucial drafting stage. It suggests
the human role is really shifting. Maybe less
about being the initial author from zero and
more about being the final judge, the curator,
the one who adds the essential context and makes
the final call. Okay, let's talk about where
the lines get blurry between tool and something
else. The study mentioned teaching and learning.
Yeah, about 10 % of usage falls into that category.
And there's a good side and a worrying side here.
Okay, the good. The good part is the AI can be
an incredibly patient tutor. You can ask it to
explain something complex like photosynthesis
over and over in simpler terms, like you're 10
years old, and it won't get annoyed. That's pretty
powerful for self -learning. Definitely. But
the worrying part, and this is especially true
for students, is the hallucination problem. Right.
We should quickly define that. AI hallucination
is basically AI makes up confidence sounding
stuff that is factually wrong. Exactly. Like
that funny example they use the AI inventing
a fictional John Avocado as the inventor of avocado
toast back in the 50s. It sounds plausible, but
it's completely made up. And if students just
accept that without checking. They risk learning
things that just aren't true. It trains a habit
of acceptance rather than critical thinking,
which is... not great. Yeah, definitely not.
What about the more social uses? This is where
it gets even blurrier. About 2 % of messages
were people asking for relationship advice. Wow.
Asking AI about... Boyfriend problems, family
issues. Yeah, things like that. And the why is
probably similar to asking basic questions. It's
always available and there's zero judgment. You
don't have to worry about burdening a friend
or feeling embarrassed. But the risk there seems
really high. Enormous. AI doesn't have feelings.
It doesn't understand love or grief or jealousy.
It just recognizes patterns in data about how
humans talk about those things. So the advice
is going to be generic. based on averages, not
on your specific nuanced human situation. Exactly.
It lacks that essential human context and, frankly,
any real moral compass. Relying on it for deep
emotional guidance feels, well, pretty concerning.
And there was even small talk. Another 2 % was
just basic small talk. Hi, how are you? Tell
me a joke. Things like that. Which on one level
is harmless, but it does suggest that for some
people the line between tool and companion is
basically gone It could even point to you know
loneliness replacing potentially tricky human
chats with easy, predictable AI ones. And this
all ties into a bigger trend they saw, right?
Moving from doing to asking. Yeah, that was a
key shift. Asking the AI to actively do a task
made up about 35 % of usage, but asking it for
information, advice, or opinions, asking or consulting
that was over half, almost 52%. So we want the
AI to help us think, help us decide, more than
we want it to just perform tasks for us. Seems
that way. Which leads to another question. If
AI is always there, this patient, non -judgmental
listener, does that constant availability maybe
reduce our own ability or willingness to engage
in those messy, sometimes difficult but ultimately
deeper human connections? It feels like it could,
yeah. It risks making us less reliant on the
hard work of real, nuanced human interaction.
which is where real growth happens. Okay, let's
talk about skill levels. The study had some really
interesting insights into how AI affects beginners
versus experts. It's almost like A tool of inversion.
How so? For beginners, people who are novices
at something, AI is amazing. It can help you
leap from knowing basically nothing, 0%, up to
maybe 80 % proficiency really fast. Like the
coding example. If you've never written HTML,
you can ask for a simple website for your, I
don't know, local bakery. And boom, you get a
decent functional starting point. It dramatically
lowers the barrier to entry for learning practical
new skills. It makes starting less intimidating.
But for experts, it's different. Completely different
story. Experts usually already know that basic
80%. They operate in that final, tricky 20 %
where nuance, deep experience, and subtle judgment
matter most. And that's where AI struggles. Often,
yeah. This leads to what the study called knowledge
dilution. The AI might get the basics right,
but it messes up the critical details that define
true expertise. Like the Hemingway example they
mentioned, an AI might mimic the short sentences.
Right, it gets the superficial style points,
but it misses the underlying tone, the subtext,
the why behind Hemingway's choices. So the expert
ends up spending their valuable time just correcting
the AI's generic, slightly off output. So the
AI helps the novice more than the expert in a
way. The expert still has to provide that crucial
last 20 % of human insight. Exactly. The real
value add is still human at the highest levels.
And thinking about who's using this, the study
found that half of all messages are coming from
Gen Z. Half? Wow. I mean, imagine scaling that
learning curve, or maybe that dependency curve,
to potentially billions of queries globally from
just that generation. That's huge. It is. And
it drives that worry we talked about. Are young
people becoming too dependent? Are they using
it to bypass the struggle of learning, asking
for the whole essay? Instead of using it smartly
for an outline or to check their arguments, it's
the difference between cheating yourself and
augmenting yourself. Right. It always comes down
to how you use the tool. But the temptation to
take the easy route is definitely there. On a
positive note, though, they mentioned the gender
gap is closing. Yeah, that's great news for accessibility.
It's almost even now, about 48 % male users.
And they did see some slight tendency differences
in how people use it. Like what? Female users
tended to lean a bit more towards help with writing
and practical guidance, like planning or organizing
things. Male users leaned a bit more towards
technical help, coding, and straightforward information
seeking. Just tendencies, though, not hard rules,
obviously. Interesting. So this brings up a big
question for the future, then. If AI gets really
good at handling that first 80 % of almost any
task, giving everyone a solid starting point,
how do future experts actually develop those
foundational skills, the stuff you learned in
that initial struggle? That's the million dollar
question, isn't it? It suggests the future of
developing expertise might be less about mastering
the basics from scratch and more about learning
how to rigorously question, validate, and ultimately
perfect the AI's initial 80 % output. OK, let's
try to bring this all together. We've seen AI
shift dramatically towards personal use, redefining
productivity around learning and life admin.
Professionally, the key skill seems to be evolving
towards editing, refining, judging AI output,
rather than just raw creation from zero. Right.
And AI literacy, knowing how to prompt, well,
critically evaluate the answers, spot the hallucinations,
that's becoming absolutely essential for everyone.
But you mentioned a final major risk they highlighted.
Decision laundering. Yeah, and this one feels
like the most significant ethical red flag decision
laundering. Okay. What exactly is that? It's
when someone usually in a position of power uses
an AI to help make a really difficult decision
maybe one with Serious moral weight right or
impacting people's lives like who to lay off
based on some performance data Okay, and then
they essentially blame the AI for the outcome
to avoid taking personal responsibility They
say well the algorithm crunched the numbers and
this is what it decided They launder their difficult
choice through the perceived objectivity of the
machine. Wow, that's Yeah, that's really problematic.
It's deeply concerning because AI no matter how
smart it seems has no actual morals It has no
empathy no understanding of human context or
consequences Beyond the data it was trained on
so offloading those fundamentally human judgments
the ones that require courage and ethical consideration
onto an algorithm. It's basically abdicating
our responsibility. Humans have to own the final
decision, especially the hard ones. We can use
AI as a tool to inform us, but the judgment call,
that has to remain human. This whole study really
paints a picture of AI becoming less of a simple
tool and more of a constant advisor, right? Deeply
embedded in our personal lives, helping us think,
helping us decide. We're becoming editors of
choices, not just text. Yeah, we're outsourcing
the cognitive friction, maybe. So maybe the final
thought to leave people with is this. If we rely
on AI so much as an advisor, if our main role
becomes editing the choices it presents, are
we, over time, subtly losing our own ability
to generate truly original ideas, or maybe more
importantly, to develop and trust our own moral
conviction when things get tough? That's definitely
something worth thinking about as we all keep
using these incredibly powerful tools every day.
Thank you for diving deep into this fascinating
study with us today. Pre -music.