AI adoption rises as human workforce declines
DeskTime’s latest study has revealed a trend: as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the workplace grows, the number of employees is declining. Over the past two years, employees have increasingly spent more time using AI tools while the overall number of human workers has decreased.
Our study randomly sampled 100 companies globally, covering over 20,000 employees across diverse departments, such as customer service, marketing, design, web development, and more. Then, these companies’ average AI usage and employee count in 2023 and 2024 were analyzed.
“We can’t surely claim that companies are strategically replacing human workers with AI. There can be many reasons for a reduction in workforce – economic challenges, overhiring during the COVID-19 pandemic, and geopolitical factors, to name a few. At the same time, we clearly see that the use of AI tools at work is steadily growing, indicating that, in situations where the number of human workers decreases, AI steps in.”
– Artis Rozentals, CEO of DeskTime
This study follows a previous DeskTime report that found 76% of offices worldwide use ChatGPT, with the number of users nearly doubling in 2024. The rapid adoption of AI tools suggests that AI tools are quickly maturing into a core part of company workflows, with businesses eagerly embracing the benefits this technology offers.
AI marches on
The narrative that “AI is stealing our jobs” is gaining momentum. One study from 2024 concluded that some human work is already being replaced by AI after discovering a 21% reduction in demand for freelance jobs that are automation-prone. Yet a different 2024 study suggested that there’s no need for panic – their data suggested that AI is still far too expensive to replace humans in most jobs for now.
“AI will continue to shape the way we work, and we must accept that, in the future, simply being a good and diligent employee won’t be enough. To stay competitive, employees must learn to use AI alongside their unique human skills,” Rozentals stresses. “AI certainly has the potential to boost productivity, but we need more data to fully understand its true impact. Time tracking can help companies measure this impact, enabling employers to make data-driven decisions and optimize workflows with AI.”
The goal of our latest study was to investigate the widely discussed narrative that AI is coming for our jobs. Despite numerous anecdotal evidence, there’s a lack of solid data to support this claim.
DeskTime randomly selected 100 companies with the employee count ranging from 20 to over 6000 employees. The employee count was analyzed in relation to hours spent using 20 of the well-known AI tools*. The findings showed that, on average, employee numbers were declining almost in direct proportion to the increase in AI usage.
* chatGPT, Character AI, QuillBot, Midjourney, Hugging Face, Google Gemini, Novel AI, CapCut, Civit AI, Claude, Jasper AI, Perplexity, Chatsonic, Janitor AI, DeepL, Canva, Remove Background, Grammarly, Github Copilot, Codeium.
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