What Work Does Generative AI Do?

Authors:
Alexander Bick, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Adam Blandin, Vanderbilt University
David Deming, Harvard University
Tyler Schumacher, Vanderbilt University

Abstract:

We measure how workers use genAI for their jobs in a nationally representative survey linking genAI adoption to detailed occupations and tasks. Our data provide the first task-level genAI adoption indexes, which we show can inform analyses of genAI’s labor market impact. Exposure scores explain some, but far from all, of the variation in adoption across occupations and tasks. We also distinguish our indexes from measures based on genAI platform chat logs, which differ conceptually and tend to over-classify chats into generic activities spanning many occupations. Finally, we highlight that current adoption is widespread but shallow: genAI is used across many occupations and tasks, yet within most of them, fewer than half of workers adopt. This indicates substantial variation among workers doing very similar work, suggesting that understanding who adopts may matter as much as understanding which tasks genAI assists.