The who, what, and where of AI adoption in America
Just 6% of U.S. companies used AI in 2017, the researchers found, and AI use was concentrated in larger companies and in industries such as manufacturing and information technology.
Just 6% of U.S. companies used AI in 2017, the researchers found, and AI use was concentrated in larger companies and in industries such as manufacturing and information technology.
“Coding is probably the single area from a productivity gain we’re most excited about today. It’s massively deployed and at scaled usage, at this point,” Altman said. “Healthcare and education are two things that are coming up that curve that we’re very excited about, too.”
Large-scale compute is also environmentally unsustainable: chips are highly toxic to produce and require an enormous amount of energy to manufacture: for example, TSMC on its own accounts for 4.8 percent of Taiwan’s national energy consumption, more than the entire capital city of Taipei. Running data centers is likewise environmentally very costly: estimates equate every prompt run on ChatGPT to the equivalent of pouring out an entire bottle of water.
IDC says the PC industry will “experience more pain” before things pick up, but it is pinning forecasts on a Windows 11 migration, a more general refresh cycle for devices bought early in the pandemic, and of course the aforementioned generative AI component.