Are your bosses holding back AI knowledge from you? New study suggests top-heavy balance in many firms is hurting workers

• Adobe Acrobat study claims 99% of C-suite leaders use AI, but only 41% of regular workers use it
• Use cases are far more advanced among business leaders
• Data security and privacy concerns are still major blockers

New Adobe Acrobat research has revealed a growing disparity in AI adoption at work among UK adults, with 99% of C-suite leaders using AI tools compared with just 41% of non-management employees.

But it's not just a case of who's using AI and how much – it's also which tasks they're using it for, and the most common use case for non-management workers is document creation and editing (17%). In other words, basic creative work.

In comparison, leaders are clearly using AI for higher-level decision-making, with use cases spanning data analysis (35%), meeting and task management (33%) and marketing (25%).

Managers are using AI for more reasons than regular workers

As a result of this disparity, 37% of C-suite leaders say they save three to five hours a week thanks to AI, compared with just 13% of knowledge workers. Adobe argues this could imply that access to AI, knowledge of how to use it and support for its adoption may vary depending on the type of employee.

For example, 74% of C-suite leaders say they're willing to share documents with AI, but only 20% of other workers feel the same way – that's a huge difference.

In its report, Adobe begins by recommending some basic AI use cases designed to alleviate some of the administrative pressures workers already face. For example, creating drafts and summaries covering meetings, emails and collaboration can reduce the need for some of the less creative work, freeing up time for more productive work.

But Adobe also stressed the importance of building organization-wide confidence to iron out the same old concerns we've been seeing since day one – once companies can get on top of security, privacy and transparency, workers are less likely to worry about potential risks.

For now, though, with data security and privacy concerns (22%) remaining some of the highest challenges to AI adoption, enterprises have a clear area to improve.

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