(Montreal) The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is still timid in the employment environment in Canada. Canadian workers also seem more reluctant to use this technology compared to their counterparts in other countries.
This is what a new PwC survey suggests on the opinions of workers here and abroad regarding their jobs. The study published this week looked at the use of AI among approximately 56,000 people in 50 countries and territories, including some 2,000 Canadians.
Globally, results differ. Just over a third of respondents (36%) said they used generative AI at least once a month, while 37% said they never did.
“It’s a fairly marked gap (between Canada and the rest of the world), analyzes the head of human resources at PwC Canada, Sonia Boisvert, in an interview. It seems that in Canada, it is really rarer for employees to use artificial intelligence at work. »
Why haven’t many Canadian workers adopted generative AI? Of the respondents, 28% said they did not think adopting generative AI would benefit their careers and 26% said they did not know how to use it.
These results also present discrepancies with responses internationally: 21% believe that the use of AI would have no advantage for their professional career and 23% said they did not know how to use these tools.
Ms. Boisvert also notes that a “gap is widening” between Canadian workers and the country’s business leaders. PwC compared employee responses to those collected in another survey of executives regarding how certain factors will influence their work or business over the next three years.
“When asked about the impact of technological changes, 50% of CEOs think that, to a large or very large extent, technological changes will have an impact on their business, while for workers, it’s only 38%,” summarizes Ms. Boisvert.
“So business leaders see the impact that technological changes will have on the work environment, but workers don’t see it yet,” adds the assurance associate at PwC.
PwC maintains in its survey that Canadian workers have every interest in opening up to AI, particularly those whose jobs are more exposed to this technology.
According to PwC, the share of job postings requiring AI skills almost doubled between 2012 and 2023 out of more than 500 million job postings in Canada and around the world.
Artificial intelligence “is here to stay” and “people need to learn how to use it,” says Boisvert.
“What we say is that people who use artificial intelligence will replace people who don’t use it. If you say to yourself “I, artificial intelligence, I don’t want to open myself up to that, I don’t want to try it”, what risks overwhelming you is not the machine or artificial intelligence, but another employee who is going to use it and who is going to become much more competitive than you in the job market,” she says.
The rise of artificial intelligence could lead to the disappearance of certain positions. But it can also be beneficial to the labor market, in particular by improving productivity, underlines Ms. Boisvert.
“Technology will accompany humans. […] Artificial intelligence will help humans to do less repetitive, more interesting tasks,” she maintains.
The use of AI can also be accompanied by better pay, underlines Ms. Boisvert. On average, Canadian companies pay a salary premium of around 11% for positions requiring AI skills, according to PwC’s AI Jobs Barometer.
In its report on the supervision of AI, submitted last February, the Quebec Innovation Council mentions that “the integration of AI into the professional environment presents numerous advantages, both for organizations […] only for workers.”
The Council warns, however, that artificial intelligence also carries “risks of inadequate management and loss of jobs”. In particular, he recommends modernizing labor law and social policies “to ensure that they take into account the technological evolution of AI”.
The Council also invites Quebec to update the adult education and continuing training policy, in order to “allow workers of all origins and specializations to acquire digital and AI skills”, and so that they can adapt to the transformation of the labor market.
Employers must also set the table to encourage the development of this knowledge among their employees, says Ms. Boisvert. PwC also urges workers to try AI at work or at home to alleviate fears about it.
Respondents to the PwC survey came from a variety of employment sectors, such as manufacturing, government, financial services, the healthcare industry as well as technology, media and telecommunications.