Study Finds More Public Sector Employees Embracing AI

Public sector employees haven’t always been completely at ease with AI’s growing role in the workplace.

A new research report, however, finds more state and local government workers turning to artificial intelligence to help carry out a number of tasks on the job.

MissionSquare Research Institute recently surveyed 2,000 state and local government employees, “exploring how workers use artificial intelligence, what services they provide, and their overall concerns about AI’s impact on their future jobs,” according to a MissionSquare statement.

The survey shows that some government workers are still worried about AI making them expendable. While most respondents (63%) expressed minimal concern about AI replacing their job functions, one in five (20%) said they were very or extremely concerned.

Still, the majority of survey participants suggested that AI is making their work lives easier in a number of ways. For example, more than half of respondents said that AI has improved work quality and productivity.

In addition, 42% of government employees surveyed said they feel they are more knowledgeable about their workplace use of AI than their co-workers are. That said, just 28% said they have received AI-related training from their employer. And, while most respondents are not especially concerned about significant retraining needs or the potential for AI to replace their job function, 20% said they were very or extremely concerned.

When asked to gauge their agency’s level of preparedness to implement AI, just 13% said their employer was very prepared, with another 19% describing their agency as being moderately prepared.

“As employers, helping employees understand the benefits of AI can be a critical component to unlocking new levels of productivity and job satisfaction across the workforce,” said report author Gerald Young, senior researcher at the MissionSquare Research Institute, in a statement.

“Our research shows that AI is becoming more widely embraced by state and local government employees, with the most common uses leveraged for writing, document processing, and scheduling, among many more. As a result, there is a real opportunity for employers to lean in through proper training of available solutions and sharing more positive experiences about their AI offerings compared to the perceptions that may exist today.”