Study finds more workers using ChatGPT without telling their bosses

A hot potato: The chatbot craze is reaching further than anyone thought. A recent study finds that 43 percent of professionals use AI tools, including ChatGPT, for work-related tasks. The majority, nearly one-third, are doing so without letting their boss know.

In a recent survey of 11,793 Fishbowl users, almost 70 percent of workers claimed they had used AI tools for work-related tasks, reflecting the increased public interest in AI assistance and automation spurred by innovations like ChatGPT. That is a massive increase from the 27 percent of professionals who confessed to using generative AI tools for work reasons in a Fishbowl study from early January.

When asked if they had informed their managers about utilizing AI tools for work, 68 percent said they had not. Participants in the study included employees from Amazon, Bank of America, Edelman, Google, IBM, JP Morgan, McKinsey, Meta, Nike, Twitter, and thousands of others.

Moreover, Fishbowl noted a 107-percent increase in posts and comments on its social network mentioning ChatGPT between January 2 and January 23. Respondents claim to use ChatGPT for creating various things, including cover letters, emails, and copywriting.

Interestingly, ChatGPT is designed to simulate a human conversation and can be used to provide customer service or information. Its accuracy depends on the quality of the data fed into it. The more data it has, the more accurate it becomes.

As more professionals now use AI to help with their work, education became a sector where ChatGPT would immediately become a hot-button issue. Using the core technology, it is now easy for kids to cheat on assignments and college application essays. A new survey by online education resource Study.com reports that one out of every four K-12 teachers has caught at least one student cheating using ChatGPT. This discovery comes with the controversy that many educators submit materials for grading through the ChatGPT AI without the consent or knowledge of students and administrators.

Undoubtedly, the influence of AI will only grow in the future. Microsoft launched a brand-new version of Bing on Tuesday that integrates ChatGPT to improve the overall user experience. Likewise, Google is getting ready to launch Bard, its rival chatbot, in the upcoming weeks.