Are Baby Boomers okay with artificial intelligence (AI)?

Yes. In fact, most want to acquire skills to use AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Amazon Q – and in nearly the
same number as younger generations, according to new research.

A study of 1600 Kiwi workers and 500 employers, carried out by Access Partnership for AWS, found that 78 per cent of Gen Z, 82 per cent of Millennials, and 76 per cent of Gen X workers want to acquire AI skills.

And 70 per cent of Baby Boomers – a demographic often seen as contemplating retirement – said they would enrol in an AI upskilling course if it was offered, Kiwi Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) were also keener to train for AI than Australians.

The good news: Employers are willing to boost pay by more than a third if you do skill-up on AI – with those in IT (41 per cent), and research and development (38 per cent) enjoying the highest potential pay bumps.

The bad: While 90 per cent of New Zealand employers expect to use AI-related solutions, such as chatbots and speech recognition, within their organisations by 2028, Kiwi firms have been a bit slow on the uptake to date, compared to their offshore peers. A separate study, for Datacom, found that nearly half of New Zealand firms have yet to even experiment with basic AI tools.

Despite being interested in the application of AI, some 79 per cent of employers admit they don’t know how to implement an AI workforce training programme.

And while hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority for nearly two out of three employers (63 per cent ) in New Zealand, 70 per cent can’t find the talent they need.

The survey was partly in the service of spruiking AWS’s AI training efforts. The tech giant’s New Zealand head of strategy and operations, Pip Gilbert, says her firm offers eight free online AI courses which cater for everyone from newbies who’ve never used AI to experienced developers looking to hone their large language model skills.

In the same vein, 92 per cent of both employers and workers in New Zealand expect to benefit from generative artificial intelligence or “gen AI” which refers to an advanced form of AI that can create new content and ideas, or perform tasks like summarising meeting notes and creating action points.

A model early adopter of AWS’s gen AI solution is One NZ, which says it’s been able to use the tech to speed up the resolution of calls to its help centre – to the point where it’s now comfortable publicising waiting times on its website. Customer trust scores have increased by 10 per cent.

At another AWS customer, Kiwibank, GM for risk, security and data governance Tim Gardner says: “We recently held an AI hackathon focused on how AI can be used to create better outcomes for our teams and customers.”

AWS’s Gilbert said one misconception is that AI will impact IT departments the most. The AWS executive says the impact will be felt across all white-collar roles.

“We’ve been talking about New Zealand’s productivity for decades,” Gilbert says. “The technology is now there to address it.”

“This research by AWS further reinforces the importance of AI for New Zealand’s future, and the need to invest in skilling our workforce to support the future needs of our country,” says Graeme Muller, chief executive of tech industry body, NZTech.

“Huge productivity gains will be available, which will have a positive effect on our economy and GDP, but only if industry and Government work together to prepare Kiwis with AI skills.”

That might be so if we grasp the AI nettle. But in the meantime we’re going backwards. Earlier this week, Statistics NZ reported that our labour productivity fell 0.9 per cent in the year to March 2023.

Tech, non-tech workers have different takes

AWS shared three further findings, not included in the Access Partnership report.

Perceived benefits of gen AI vary by type of worker:

The top three areas where employers expect productivity increase from the use of gen AI are:

The top three areas where workers expect productivity increase from the use of gen AI are

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.