43% of Filipino professionals 'conflicted' about rise of AI —survey

At least 43% of Filipino professionals and employees are "conflicted" over the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) which creates new content, a report by the US-based Boston Consulting Group Center for Consumer Insight (BCG-CCI) showed Wednesday.

The report, titled How People Really Feel About AI, also showed that 38% of Filipinos are "excited" about the rise of AI while only 19% of Filipinos are "concerned."

The report, which surveyed 21,400 respondents from 21 countries including the Philippines, asked the question, "Which of the following statements apply to you regarding the rise of artificial intelligence?"

It described excited as "those who expressed only positive sentiments; conflicted as those who expressed mixed positive and negative sentiments; and concerned as those who expressed only negative sentiments.

As to the overall sentiments in the countries surveyed, the report showed that 43% of professionals and employees worldwide are excited about the rise of AI as opposed to the 29% concerned and 28% conflicted.

The respondents see AI to "improve daily lives (39%); enable scientific/medical breakthroughs (32%); and capture new forms of arts/expression (24%).

Those concerned over AI rise cited data privacy (33%); degree of uncertainty (11%); and environmental impact (10%).

“It is an interesting dichotomy. Those with younger populations...the emerging economies....they would rather have AI access rather than no access at all. They want AI-enabled diagnostic solutions so they can bring medical care to far-flung places. But for mature markets that have larger access to infrastructure, they don’t take that access for granted. So there is resistance,” Aparna Bharadwaj, Global Leader of BCG’s Global Advantage Practice, said in an online press briefing.

“It (AI sentiment) depends on the amount of resources, infrastructure, and technology available to them,” she added.

The report showed that the highest concern over AI rise was recorded in six of the world’s biggest economies namely France at 50%, Australia at 49%, UK at 43%, Sweden at 42%, United States at 40% and Germany at 39%.

Irreplaceable

Overall, 55% of those surveyed said their jobs cannot be easily replaced by AI or other technologies.

Only 19% responded that the rise of AI makes them worry about their job status.

The percentage of respondents who felt their job won’t be replaced by AI ranged from 50% to 64% across all sectors, but the highest percentage of those who are worried about  AI at 27% was recorded in the marketing and communications sector.

The second most concerned sector is finance and accounting at 23%, followed by delivery courier at 21%, engineers and sales at 20%, manufacturing/factory worker and analyst at 19%, driver/pilot and teacher at 18%, management at 17%, doctor, nurse, and pharmacist at 16% and househelp/babysitter at 15%.

“Those in process-intensive, office-based, support function roles feel the most threatened, while those in relationship-intensive roles feel less threatened,” Jessica Apotheker, BCG Chief Marketing Officer and Leader for AI in Marketing, said.

Aside from the Philippines, the BCG-CCI report surveyed respondents from the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, India, China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia.

Of the respondents, 81% belong to the lower middle class while 19% belong to the high-income class.—LDF, GMA Integrated News