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More U.S. companies are about to flip the \u201con\u201d switch when it comes to automating tasks with artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
According to a survey of CFOs<\/a> by Duke University\u2019s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, plans to use AI in the coming year are surging.<\/p>\n To be sure, companies have been automating work for generations, and the survey said that 60% of companies plan in the next 12 months to use software, equipment, and\/or other technologies to automate tasks being done by employees. That\u2019s little changed compared to the 59% who said their companies have automated tasks over the prior 12 months.<\/p>\n But when asked specifically about using AI, the answers indicated a key tipping point. Among the businesses that expect to automate in the next 12 months,\u00a0about 54% said they will use AI tools to automate tasks being done by employees while 27% said they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the nearly the reverse when compared with the 37% that used AI to automate in the prior 12 months and the 60% that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cCFOs say their firms are tapping AI to automate a host of tasks, from paying suppliers, invoicing, procurement, financial reporting, and optimizing facilities utilization,\u201d said Duke finance professor John Graham, academic director of the survey, in a statement. \u201cThis is on top of companies using ChatGPT to generate creative ideas and to draft job descriptions, contracts, marketing plans, and press releases.\u201d<\/p>\n Large companies are leading the stampede into AI, with 76% saying they will use it to automate in the coming year. That\u2019s up from the 55% that used AI during the previous year.<\/p>\n Still, small companies are getting onboard too, with 44% saying they will use AI to automate tasks in the next 12 months versus 32% that won\u2019t and up from 29% that did in the prior 12 months.<\/p>\n The survey doesn\u2019t necessarily suggest that companies will completely replace human workers with AI, considering that employees perform multiple tasks for their jobs.<\/p>\n But it does suggest that AI skills will be increasingly important in the workplace, perhaps sooner than people realize.<\/p>\n LinkedIn<\/a> cofounder Reid Hoffman told CNN<\/a> that in three to five years, humans will likely have an \u201cagent copilot\u201d that helps them with tasks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s job transformation. Human jobs will be replaced\u2014but will be replaced by other humans using AI,\u201d he added. \u201cThe whole ideas is to be the human who is using AI, to learn it, to do it, to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n But over the longer term, AI\u2019s impact on the labor market could be more significant.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee\u00a0reaffirmed his prediction<\/a> from 2017, when he said AI would replace 50% of human jobs in the following decade. <\/p>\n At the Fortune Innovation forum in Hong Kong in March,\u00a0Fortune\u00a0<\/em>editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell<\/a> asked him if the timeline still holds.<\/p>\n He replied, \u201cIt\u2019s actually uncannily accurate. People have criticized me for being too aggressive in 2017, 2018, 2019, and I was a little nervous at the time. But when gen AI came out, I think everybody\u2019s on the bandwagon and believing that is the correct pace.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSubscribe to the Fortune Next to Lead newsletter to get weekly strategies on how to make it to the corner office. Sign up for free<\/a> before it launches on June 24, 2024.<\/div>\n