Written by Gary Gould, WorkBuzz CMO
The internet has been around in an everyday sense for 30 years, with its widespread adoption accelerating in the 1990s. However, it didn’t just appear overnight. The advent of the “information superhighway” was made possible by Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web, the innovation which enabled users to browse and search for information, marking the end of a two-decade-long journey to find an everyday use from its Cold War and academic origins in the late 1960s.
Fast forward to the 2000s, when network speeds caught up with broadband and then mobile 3G, which allowed the internet to truly thrive. In truth, it was a 30-year journey to become an overnight success, despite some bumps in the road like the dotcom crash in 2001 which was fuelled by overinflated expectations. It was a slow path, but it has now reached a point where, according to DataReportal, more than five and a half billion people use the internet every day.
Digital Generation 1.0
Generationally, the internet created two groups to describe the relationship with this new digital technology:
- Digital Natives: Comprised of younger Generation X (those born in the 70s and 80s) and Millennials (post-1983).
- Digital Immigrants: Typically, post-war Baby Boomers and older Generation X born in the 1960s.
The major factor was that the older Digital Immigrants group had not used any computers or digital technology in their work or education. They didn’t have IT or computer studies at school, which would have given them ‘hands-on’ experience from an early age. Computers were, for that generation, wonderous machines you would only see on Star Trek or in James Bond movies, complete with large magnetic tape storage and an evil villain stroking a white cat. Aside from typewriters and a landline telephone, the office was bereft of technology. If you were in a frontline, field, or shop floor job, everything was a very analogue employee experience.
The differences between these digital tribes have been the subject of academic, and scientific study, numerous articles, and even TED Talks. Although this topic is now receding into history. The intergenerational adoption of AI will push this topic further into the recesses of living memory.
Why Generation AI is Different
By comparison to the early internet adopters, the generational relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) will be more pervasive and nuanced. While the internet’s growth was limited by access, the adoption of AI into the mainstream will hinge on belief systems and worldviews. Any anxiety about the risk of AI will be balanced with a growing belief that it is, in fact, a force for good—freeing up time, supporting everyday life, and enhancing productivity—instead, driving adoption at a rapid pace. We can already see this in the uptake of ChatGPT—a generative AI subscription service that takes text, images, video, and code to generate new content—which gained more active users in its first nine months than TikTok, which, according to Sprout Social, is the fastest growing social media platform. And it’s been growing exponentially ever since.
However, there are valid concerns about AI adoption. The primary danger is that AI is still a machine and will feed off existing knowledge and societal bias across race, gender, class, and generations rather than reflecting human values. Regulation will play a part in working against this, but so will innovation to build AI brains that are suited to a particular purpose.
AI’s Role in Transforming the Workplace
In the world of work, unlike the internet in the 90s, AI adoption won’t be defined by the distinction between office, field, floor, and frontline roles. According to Google’s Data and AI Trends Report 2024, 52% of users are non-technical, demonstrating its accessibility to all types of employees. This includes HR, where the latest State of Employee Engagement survey revealed a transition from a clear disinterest in AI in 2023 to more widespread interest and increasing application in 2024.
The bottom line is that AI will completely transform employee engagement. It won’t just make employee data more literate; it will help drive HR productivity and accelerate knowledge sharing, which will have a huge impact on employees through better interpretation, comprehension, and action-taking. Traditional dashboards will die in favour of more personalised, intuitive, interactive conversations and visualisations that are context-aware, based on different work roles and environments. This will not only revolutionise employee engagement, but will help drive meaningful employee experiences that every organisation will benefit from. With AI services being embedded in almost all modern-day software, Generation AI is not rising at dawn—it’s already at work.
Curious about how AI can drive success in your organization? Discover how People Science AI is becoming an indispensable asset in HR, and read why AI isn’t here to take your job—it’s here to make your job easier.