The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI

Summary

NOTE: The PDF retrieved under this citekey is in fact Bick, Blandin and Deming (2024/2025), "The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI" (NBER Working Paper 32966) — not the Management Science peer-review study named in the bibliography (see Critique). That paper reports results from a series of nationally representative U.S. surveys of generative AI use at work and at home, fielded in August and November 2024, with more than 10,000 respondents.

Contribution

Headline findings: as of late 2024, "nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population age 18-64 uses generative AI"; 23 percent of employed respondents had used genAI for work at least once in the previous week and 9 percent every work day. "Relative to each technology's first mass-market product launch, work adoption of generative AI has been as fast as the personal computer (PC), and overall adoption has been faster than either PCs or the internet." Between 1% and 5% of all work hours are currently AI-assisted, with reported time savings equivalent to 1.4% of total work hours.

Method

Nationally representative survey (Real-Time Population Survey, RPS) of working-age US adults, two waves in Aug/Nov 2024, >10,000 respondents combined.

Relevance to RISE

Provides the population-level adoption baseline against which any claim about agentic-research adoption must be set: if knowledge work broadly is at 23% weekly genAI use, then RISE-style autonomous-research agents are very far up the diffusion curve. Useful baseline data for the introductory chapters of any RISE evaluation report.

Critique / open questions

The Management Science peer-review study described in the bibliography is not the document found at this citekey — references.bib / papers/pdfs/ should be reconciled. As a survey paper it speaks to adoption and self-reported time savings, not to productivity or quality outcomes.

Key quotes

"As of late 2024, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population age 18-64 uses generative AI. 23 percent of employed respondents had used generative AI for work at least once in the previous week, and 9 percent used it every work day."

"Relative to each technology's first mass-market product launch, work adoption of generative AI has been as fast as the personal computer (PC), and overall adoption has been faster than either PCs or the internet."