New Research Shows U.S. Employees Prefer Outsourcing Nearly Half Tasks to Machine Learning Solutions

Back to Newsroom

Survey Finds US Workers Want to Delegate 48% of Tasks to Artificial Intelligence

March 19, 2019

Also Reveals Top Most Hated Tasks Include Attending Meetings and Reviewing Long Documents

A new survey by ABBYY, a global leader in Enterprise Content IQ, shows almost half of office workers would be happy to have robots do parts of their job that they dislike. The survey also revealed that staff would love to hand over tasks such as reviewing long documents, data entry, electronic filing, and even attending meetings.

About half (49%) of those who hate reviewing documents spend a whole day a week doing so, while 40 percent who detest going to certain meetings also clock up a day or more of their time attending them.

However, not all respondents had faith in a new digital coworker. About one-in-three would not delegate any work to AI (27%), and a third do not feel AI could do a better job than them on any task (32%).

“The survey tells us that workers tend to procrastinate on admin tasks, while tackling communication work immediately. Staff are more likely to do value-added work right away, such as speak to customers, communicate with colleagues, attend meetings and take notes, while pushing off admin duties such as expenses and time tracking for a day or more,” stated Bruce Orcutt, senior vice president of Product Marketing at ABBYY. “With the advent of AI capabilities entering personal lives, workers are now ready to trust simpler tasks they hate to a robot. Fortunately, advanced cognitive technologies have entered organizations that can not only automate manual tasks but digitize and analyze unstructured or semi-structured content to help workers make valuable business decisions.”

Top Tasks US Workers Hate Most:

• Reviewing long documents (20%)
• Attending certain meetings (20%)
• Speaking to their bosses (16%)
• Speaking to customers (15%)

Top Tasks US Workers Want to Delegate to Robots

• Inputting data/data entry (18%)
• Checking/updating inventory (15%)
• Electronic filing (15%)

Top Tasks US Workers are Less Likely to Delegate to Robots

• Speaking to a customer (12%)
• Speaking to their boss (10%)
• Communicating with colleagues (6%)

The survey was developed by ABBYY and conducted by an independent research firm the week of February 25, 2019 among 2,000 working adults in the US. The survey looks at the impact of automation, robotics and digitalization on working attitudes.

About ABBYY

ABBYY is a global leader in Enterprise Content IQ. ABBYY offers a complete range of AI-based technologies and solutions transforming business documents and content into business value. By providing digital transformation solutions to financial services, insurance, transportation, healthcare and other industries, the company helps organizations achieve the next wave of growth by understanding customers and delivering responsive real-time intelligent systems. The flexibility of ABBYY AI solutions enables customers to utilize a diverse range of advanced technologies, platforms and solutions for classification, text analytics, data and entity extraction, and data validation via any communication channel and in any format. ABBYY technologies are used and licensed by some of the largest international enterprises and government organizations, as well as SMBs and individuals. The company maintains offices in Australia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, the UK, Ukraine, and the United States. For more information, please visit www.abbyy.com/company/about-us/ .

ABBYY and the ABBYY Logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of ABBYY Software Ltd. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby recognized.

Media Contact:

Gina Ray, APR

949-370-0971

[email protected]

Connect with us