Nearly half of US office workers use ChatGPT - survey

No fear of competition: An online survey shows that ChatGPT is likely widespread among U.S. office workers.

The Tokyo-based market research firm "MM Research Institute" conducted an online survey of 13,814 office workers at companies in Japan and the U.S. in late May. According to the survey, about half of U.S. workers use ChatGPT for work.

Among Japanese office workers, the figure is only 7 percent, mainly in larger companies with more than 100 employees. This could be because ChatGPT is worse in Japanese than in English, and because of awareness: 46 percent of Japanese respondents did not know about ChatGPT, compared to only nine percent in the US.

More than 60 percent of U.S. executives said they were very interested in the technology, while in Japan security concerns predominated. That could change as the Tokyo government plans to begin using ChatGPT in August.

Creativity at your fingertips

ChatGPT is most commonly used to increase efficiency in word processing, such as email templates, meeting summaries, and organizing large amounts of information. It is also used in HR to develop interview questions or job postings, according to the study.

Better education and training are seen as future areas of application. Infrastructure and academic research top the list of uses in Japan with ten percent each.

In addition to text tasks, ChatGPT can also serve as a sparring partner for all kinds of intellectual tasks. In the U.S., 60 percent of ChatGPT users use the tool for brainstorming, compared to 25 percent in Japan. Use for coding is also much more common in the U.S., at 45 percent, compared to 14 percent in Japan.

In both countries, concerns about the accuracy of responses are the main barriers to using ChatGPT. Privacy and ChatGPT's ability to understand one's own questions were also cited as barriers.