The latest Dye & Durham Australian Market Pulse survey has explored 1,610 Australians’ attitudes to the economy, the property market and technology. Conducted by leading pollster Resolve Strategic, the report has found that the number of people using AI at work and at home has risen amid new priorities.

According to the report, keeping the cost of living low was the number one priority across a range of other issues, with 61 per cent of respondents believing that a recession was an increasingly likely prospect.

Eighty per cent of workers said they consider technology important to their jobs, with more than half deeming it either critical or very important. This is particularly the case for those with a university education and higher incomes, usually in white-collar office-based jobs, such as those in the legal profession. Of this percentage, 24 per cent said technology was “critical” to their job, with only 3 per cent saying that their job did not rely on technology at all.

However, within these technology-based jobs, customer data is often used, according to the report. Eighty-one per cent of respondents were concerned about their data held by companies potentially being hacked, released or misused.

The survey also found that Australians are increasingly embracing AI, both at home and at work, to search for ideas and inspiration and to draft messages or letters. Forty-one per cent of respondents said they had used AI in their professional lives, with 50 per cent confirming they had used AI for personal reasons and 55 per cent using AI for any reason.

Within the legal profession, lawyers were the least accepting of AI, with 50 per cent being “very uncomfortable” or “somewhat uncomfortable” with AI. Only 21 per cent of those in the legal profession said they were comfortable with the use of AI.

While there is still some fear in the profession that the rise of such tech could mean the beginning of the end of lawyers, clients are demanding efficiency more than ever despite concerns that BigLaw firms may not be utilising AI to its full potential.

As to the future of AI at work, 73 per cent said they expected AI to be a commonplace work tool in the next five years, up from two-thirds three months ago. Despite this, only 8 per cent of respondents said their jobs could be replaced by AI, with 57 per cent of jobs not likely to be changed at all by the emerging tech.

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Searching for ideas and inspiration (41 per cent), drafting letters or messages (40 per cent), and using AI as a search engine for better results (37 per cent) were the main reasons for using AI, according to the report. Drafting reports or essays was the fifth-most popular use (28 per cent) behind summarising topics respondents were working on.

Dye & Durham Australia managing director Dennis Barnhart said the report reveals a number of interesting trends around the future of AI in workplaces.

“The expectation indicates an openness to AI, or at least an assumption that it is coming, and so it’s certainly a technology to watch,” he said.

Lauren Croft

Lauren is a journalist at Lawyers Weekly and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from Macleay College. Prior to joining Lawyers Weekly, she worked as a trade journalist for media and travel industry publications and Travel Weekly. Originally born in England, Lauren enjoys trying new bars and restaurants, attending music festivals and travelling. She is also a keen snowboarder and pre-pandemic, spent a season living in a French ski resort.