Editorial
For as long as technology has been used in the workplace, its adoption curve has exposed a stark generation gap. Whether it was the first fax machine, the internet or the cloud, the trope has been that older workers cling to the tried-and-true while younger generations spur more widespread uptake (and reluctantly show their older colleagues how to make the newfangled tools work).
Well guess what? It turns out the most ambitious group when it comes to predicting the pace of professional AI adoption is baby boomers.
That’s what we at Thomson Reuters found when we surveyed more than 2,200 professionals working across legal, tax, and risk and compliance fields globally. When asked to project the pace of AI adoption in the workplace over the next one-, three- and five-year time periods, boomers had the most aggressive outlook of all generational groups. On average, boomers predicted that 60% of their teams’ current work will use AI-powered technologies in five years’ time, putting them far ahead of Gen X, millennials and Gen Z when it comes to AI optimism. In fact, just 15% of Gen Z professionals were categorized as ambitious on AI.
While both boomers and Gen Z believe generative AI will create new or additional roles — 80% and 90%, respectively — boomers predict a weekly time savings of 14 hours per week in five years, compared to Gen Z’s 10 hours per week saved.
The Case for Intuitive Technology
The finding initially surprised us, but once we started to peel back the layers of what’s really happening inside the world’s largest law firms, accounting firms and multinational corporations, it became clear that AI is a fundamentally different type of technology that’s experiencing a much different adoption curve than previous professional technologies.
First, there is the interface. Unlike previous technologies that have altered professional workflows by disrupting the manner in which work is done, AI is integrated directly into existing workflows, making them easier, more fluid and intuitive. In fact, many lawyers who are currently using generative AI to conduct legal research, form initial contract drafts and analyze data, report back to us that they are not overtly aware they are even using AI. Instead, they just notice that things have improved. The perfect nugget of information gets surfaced that much more quickly; the search process is more intuitive; the first draft of the contract is a little less tedious to produce.
In some ways, the easy, natural language interface of many professional-grade AI tools — many of which are built directly into existing office technologies — gives a slight advantage to non-digital natives who haven’t spent their whole lives intuitively translating every query into a keyword search or double-tapping screens to zoom in on a particular object.
Related Article: Want to Improve New Technology Adoption? Target the Right People
Delegating Work to AI
Another important nuance in understanding the generational acceptance of AI is the fact that boomers are predominantly working in management and senior leadership roles. They are used to delegating work and that skillset lends itself incredibly well to developing prompts for an AI tool. It’s a phenomenon Microsoft’s CMO of AI at Work, Jared Spataro recently described as a need for professionals to “stop thinking of AI as a search engine — and start thinking of it as your newest direct report.”
This is a really insightful point. AI-powered tools, when used properly in a professional setting, deliver so much more than generic answers to a basic question. In legal research applications, for example, AI will produce an accurate result for a simple question like, “What legal precedent was overturned in Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce?” but its real value is in more advanced queries like, “What are the five most important cases where the Chevron doctrine was argued successfully by plaintiff’s counsel?”
These are the kinds of complex, multidimensional questions senior partners are already asking. So, when it comes time to test a new AI tool, they’re naturally predisposed to enter the types of prompts that deliver the best results. They are also in the best position to see the value of those results when they realize the hours of research it would have taken to get to that same answer.
Related Article: It's Time to Bust These 3 Myths About Age and Gender in the Workplace
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Democratizing Tech to Redefine the Future
A lot of conventions have been shattered during AI’s rise in the modern workplace. As the fastest-growing technology in history, it has captivated the imaginations of countless consumers and professionals — and it’s just the beginning. Across the four generations in today’s workforce, AI is also earning the distinction of being the great technology democratizer, which opens up many possibilities for its use across all facets of professional work.
The potential of AI may even bridge the generational gap among professionals. Businesses that recognize that potential and work deliberately to embed AI into all aspects of the professional workflow will be those that set the pace for innovation.
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