Charities come last of 12 sectors surveyed to use AI tools
Charities are the least likely of all sectors to use artificial intelligence, a survey has revealed.
Software firm Access, which carried out the research, found just 29% of charity workers are using AI tools such as ChatGPT regularly at work.
This is the lowest proportion among all 12 sectors represented among more than 1,000 employees surveyed.
Health and social care is the next least likely to use AI, cited by 30% of those working in this sector.
Despite low uptake of AI at work, 73% of charity workers believe “it would have a positive impact on their organisation”.
Six in 10 charity workers already using AI cited reducing workloads as the most positive aspect.
Just under half said it helps productivity and around three in ten say it saves the charity money.
More than a quarter say it offers better service and “gives staff time to focus on what matters most”.
ChatGPT is the most popular AI tool in the charity sector, with 51% if AI supported workers using the tool. However, this is just behind the all-sector average of 55%.
“Many charities run on a shoestring without in-house technical expertise to innovate using new capabilities such as AI,” said Shaf Monsour, senior product manager at Access.
“Tight budgets and limited resource only strengthen the case for adopting AI due to the efficiencies that can be made.”
Perhaps charities, with their strong governance obligations, are rightly wary of the compliance and business risks of using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools? What board of trustees would sanction adoption of ChatGPT into day to day processes without iron clad contractual guarantees to protect against the copyright and personal data protection liabilities inherent in LLMs, let alone the environmental costs produced by the huge data centres that have been built specifically to run these applications? Better to wait out the hype cycle and make a considered decision rather than jumping on the bandwagon just as the tech AI investment bubble is bursting.