December 19, 2025 • 8 mins
AI HAS BEEN ADOPTED FASTER THAN ANY OTHER ADVANCEMENT IN HISTORY And I've got a guest on today to talk about where the product is having the biggest impact already. Trevor Wagener, Chief Economist and Director of the Research Center, Computer & Communications Industry Association joins me at 12:30 to talk about this fascinating report on how quickly we all began to and continue to use AI. This conversation should be interesting.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Trevor Wagner is the chief economist and director of the
Research Center Computer and Communications Industry Association, and he's just
put together a new report called the twenty two It's
it's a bit of a dry title, Trevor, we'll work
on that for marketing purposes. Twenty twenty five Survey of
Product Impact in the Connected Economy Artificial Intelligence and some
(00:21):
of the stuff in this report is fascinating. Trevor, welcome
to the show. First of all, thank you very much
for having me. Yeah, we're going to focus group that
name and give you something a little bit a little
more sizzle, like everybody's doing it AI, you know in
the workplace. That'll that'll get you on the cover of magazines.
But this, this research is specifically about how quickly people
(00:44):
are starting to adapt and use AI. What did any
of this surprise you when you started looking into it?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So probably the most surprising finding is the extent to
which adoption has been accelerating. I look at the rate
at which it takes about sixty percent of consumers to
be using a new technology. We can look at some
key technology is and see that for the automobile, you know,
it took over twenty years for the Internet. It took
give or take a decade for the smartphone, it took
(01:16):
about seven to eight years. For generative AI. It took
less than three years, which is just an incredibly rapid adoption. Clip.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I thought about this earlier because I used chat, GBT,
I use Grock, I use Gemini, I use a lot
of them in very purposeful ways. And I thought about this,
and I thought, is part of the reason, because unlike
the adoption of the automobile, let's use that as an example,
we didn't have infrastructure to make using an automobile between
(01:46):
cities as useful as it might be.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
That took a while for the infrastructure to keep up.
But the AI is using existing infrastructure as well as
being intuitive about how to use it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
This is for me the easiest technological adoption I've ever
experienced as a gen X person, Right, And I think
those two things in concert probably make it easier for
more people to say, Yeah, I'm going to do that.
What do you think.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh, I think that's incredibly plausible because it's not as
though you need to have one specific prior technology to
use generative AI. You can use it on your smartphone
you can use it on your computer. It's incredibly easy
to use so long as you find it useful. And
that's sort of the key takeaway here is that people
have found it useful enough that they're using it and
increasingly using it on a regular weekly or even daily casese.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So, is this cutting across all age troops, socioeconomic classes.
Is this everybody or is this concentrated in people like
me who work in an information industry, or is it
everyone is adopting it at the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So there are a few minor age gradients, but the
upward trajectory is very similar cross demographics, and it really
has to be when you're moving this quickly, when you've
got sixty percent of the population doing it. It's not
as though there's one hundred percent penetration for the under
twenty fives and zero percent for those over sixty five.
You know, it's relatively similar. It's just a little bit
(03:16):
faster with the younger cohort, but not that much faster.
Everyone is using it.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
What did you guys find about productivity, Because we're being told,
you know, as productivity and increases productivity. For me, I've
had some frustrations in the sense that occasionally I can
still do something faster than AI. On occasion that does happen.
But what are you seeing in terms of productivity for
people who are using AI on a regular basis at
their jobs.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So we're seeing an average reported productivity improvement of about
fifteen percent, and that's taking into account that a lot
of folks are feeling that they have to double check
the outputs because that may do something very quickly, but
you really want to check all of the links because
there are still occasional hallucinations. Even with all of that,
people are saying they're saving on average fifteen percent of
(04:05):
their time. And what we see is that, you know,
a lot of that is redounding to the benefit of
the workers who are saying, Okay, I'm saving some time,
they aren't necessarily, you know, doing more work than they
were before. And that's why it may not all be
appearing in productivity statistics collected by official government statistical agencies,
because there they would see an increase in the overall output.
(04:28):
A lot of workers are getting their work done and
then you know, browsing the news.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Well, and here's the thing I always think about this
in the terms of entrepreneurship. For a small business owner,
fifteen percent productivity increase on your own time is massive, right,
I mean, I think it all depends on where you
are in the food chain as to how important that
fifteen percent actually is. And for me personally it is
it has got my research time on things down. I
(04:55):
can't even I don't even know if I can quantify
how helpful AI is for me on background stuff right
where I'm just trying to get a deeper dive on
a topic and it has just been game changing for me.
But the reason I asked that is, do you guys
see any and for lack of the better way put it,
a lot of tendencies in the workplace, Are there places
(05:16):
where it seems to be lagging behind an adoption or
did you go into any of that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So what we found is that on both the worker
and employer level, there's an overwhelmingly favorable approach. So from
the worker perspective and consumer perspective, we found seventy seven
percent of users are reporting a favorable impression of the
technology versus only fifteen percent who report an unfavorable impression. So,
in other words, if you're using it, you're generally liking it. Now,
(05:45):
when you start looking at the workplace, you see that
there is a significantly higher rates roughly two to one
of workplaces encouraging the use of AI as opposed to
discouraging it. So overall by a two to one or
even a three to one margin, we're seeing favorable impressions
from both workers and employers just because it is so useful.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
What did you find about which platforms are getting it done,
who's the big dog, and who's nipping at their heels?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So, you know, surprising no one, Chat GPT is in
the lead in terms of overall usage. They were sort
of the first out the gate in November twenty twenty two,
and they had that early adopter or early innovator advantage
on their heels. In second place is Google with its Gemini,
and then behind them are a series of other tools
that are all very tightly clustered, all of the other
(06:37):
big names that you sort of see in this space,
which is to say that this is a very competitive market.
You know, even though chat gpt was first out the gate,
its lead isn't you know, insurmountable. At the same time,
it does still have a noticeable lead over number two Gemini,
which has a bit of a lead over the other contenders.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And I'm gonna be honest, I have paid for premium
memberships on AIS and I have then canceled. I think
this is going to be an ongoing problem for the
subscription model because it's super easy to cancel, and if
you're not getting what you want and you're getting better
results from other AI, especially as more free AI comes up,
it's going to be really interesting to watch how that
(07:16):
business model ends up playing out, you know what I mean,
Just in terms of the ease of changing. It's not
like when you want to change your cell phone, you
have to go you know, it's everybody knows. It's like
fifty fresh layers of hell. So this is so easy
to move as a consumer from platform to platform in
order to get the various benefits. I find myself doing
it quite often as a matter of fact, depending on
(07:37):
who's in the lead. So I think that's an interesting
part that I'd like to I just want to see
what's going to happen next with that.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So we are seeing that the switching costs are effectively
zero between these different tools, which is keeping that competition
very very tight. We are seeing a general flight increase
in conversion from unpaid use to paid subscriptions more or
lesser cost of the board for the vast majority of
the tools that we're surveyed, but it's sort of a
gradual process. A lot of folks are still using these
(08:06):
sort of unpaid versions of these different tools and reporting
that they're mixing and matching them off and using two
or three, sometimes preferring one for work and one for
their personal use, or one for one type of use
case maybe writing, and another for a different use case
which might be research. So we are seeing that these
low switching costs really are encouraging people to try the
(08:28):
different tools out. Well.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I am one of those people, and I will keep
doing it until they prevent me from doing it. I
very much appreciate your time, Trevor Wagan. A very interesting conversation.
The report is fascinating and the graphs are stunning, and
I put a link to that study on the blog
today at mandysblog dot com.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Trevor, thanks so much, Thank you very much for having
me
Trevor Wagner is the chief economist and director of the
Research Center Computer and Communications Industry Association, and he's just
put together a new report called the twenty two It's
it's a bit of a dry title, Trevor, we'll work
on that for marketing purposes. Twenty twenty five Survey of
Product Impact in the Connected Economy Artificial Intelligence and some
(00:21):
of the stuff in this report is fascinating. Trevor, welcome
to the show. First of all, thank you very much
for having me. Yeah, we're going to focus group that
name and give you something a little bit a little
more sizzle, like everybody's doing it AI, you know in
the workplace. That'll that'll get you on the cover of magazines.
But this, this research is specifically about how quickly people
(00:44):
are starting to adapt and use AI. What did any
of this surprise you when you started looking into it?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So probably the most surprising finding is the extent to
which adoption has been accelerating. I look at the rate
at which it takes about sixty percent of consumers to
be using a new technology. We can look at some
key technology is and see that for the automobile, you know,
it took over twenty years for the Internet. It took
give or take a decade for the smartphone, it took
(01:16):
about seven to eight years. For generative AI. It took
less than three years, which is just an incredibly rapid adoption. Clip.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I thought about this earlier because I used chat, GBT,
I use Grock, I use Gemini, I use a lot
of them in very purposeful ways. And I thought about this,
and I thought, is part of the reason, because unlike
the adoption of the automobile, let's use that as an example,
we didn't have infrastructure to make using an automobile between
(01:46):
cities as useful as it might be.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
That took a while for the infrastructure to keep up.
But the AI is using existing infrastructure as well as
being intuitive about how to use it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
This is for me the easiest technological adoption I've ever
experienced as a gen X person, Right, And I think
those two things in concert probably make it easier for
more people to say, Yeah, I'm going to do that.
What do you think.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh, I think that's incredibly plausible because it's not as
though you need to have one specific prior technology to
use generative AI. You can use it on your smartphone
you can use it on your computer. It's incredibly easy
to use so long as you find it useful. And
that's sort of the key takeaway here is that people
have found it useful enough that they're using it and
increasingly using it on a regular weekly or even daily casese.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So, is this cutting across all age troops, socioeconomic classes.
Is this everybody or is this concentrated in people like
me who work in an information industry, or is it
everyone is adopting it at the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So there are a few minor age gradients, but the
upward trajectory is very similar cross demographics, and it really
has to be when you're moving this quickly, when you've
got sixty percent of the population doing it. It's not
as though there's one hundred percent penetration for the under
twenty fives and zero percent for those over sixty five.
You know, it's relatively similar. It's just a little bit
(03:16):
faster with the younger cohort, but not that much faster.
Everyone is using it.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
What did you guys find about productivity, Because we're being told,
you know, as productivity and increases productivity. For me, I've
had some frustrations in the sense that occasionally I can
still do something faster than AI. On occasion that does happen.
But what are you seeing in terms of productivity for
people who are using AI on a regular basis at
their jobs.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So we're seeing an average reported productivity improvement of about
fifteen percent, and that's taking into account that a lot
of folks are feeling that they have to double check
the outputs because that may do something very quickly, but
you really want to check all of the links because
there are still occasional hallucinations. Even with all of that,
people are saying they're saving on average fifteen percent of
(04:05):
their time. And what we see is that, you know,
a lot of that is redounding to the benefit of
the workers who are saying, Okay, I'm saving some time,
they aren't necessarily, you know, doing more work than they
were before. And that's why it may not all be
appearing in productivity statistics collected by official government statistical agencies,
because there they would see an increase in the overall output.
(04:28):
A lot of workers are getting their work done and
then you know, browsing the news.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Well, and here's the thing I always think about this
in the terms of entrepreneurship. For a small business owner,
fifteen percent productivity increase on your own time is massive, right,
I mean, I think it all depends on where you
are in the food chain as to how important that
fifteen percent actually is. And for me personally it is
it has got my research time on things down. I
(04:55):
can't even I don't even know if I can quantify
how helpful AI is for me on background stuff right
where I'm just trying to get a deeper dive on
a topic and it has just been game changing for me.
But the reason I asked that is, do you guys
see any and for lack of the better way put it,
a lot of tendencies in the workplace, Are there places
(05:16):
where it seems to be lagging behind an adoption or
did you go into any of that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So what we found is that on both the worker
and employer level, there's an overwhelmingly favorable approach. So from
the worker perspective and consumer perspective, we found seventy seven
percent of users are reporting a favorable impression of the
technology versus only fifteen percent who report an unfavorable impression. So,
in other words, if you're using it, you're generally liking it. Now,
(05:45):
when you start looking at the workplace, you see that
there is a significantly higher rates roughly two to one
of workplaces encouraging the use of AI as opposed to
discouraging it. So overall by a two to one or
even a three to one margin, we're seeing favorable impressions
from both workers and employers just because it is so useful.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
What did you find about which platforms are getting it done,
who's the big dog, and who's nipping at their heels?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So, you know, surprising no one, Chat GPT is in
the lead in terms of overall usage. They were sort
of the first out the gate in November twenty twenty two,
and they had that early adopter or early innovator advantage
on their heels. In second place is Google with its Gemini,
and then behind them are a series of other tools
that are all very tightly clustered, all of the other
(06:37):
big names that you sort of see in this space,
which is to say that this is a very competitive market.
You know, even though chat gpt was first out the gate,
its lead isn't you know, insurmountable. At the same time,
it does still have a noticeable lead over number two Gemini,
which has a bit of a lead over the other contenders.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And I'm gonna be honest, I have paid for premium
memberships on AIS and I have then canceled. I think
this is going to be an ongoing problem for the
subscription model because it's super easy to cancel, and if
you're not getting what you want and you're getting better
results from other AI, especially as more free AI comes up,
it's going to be really interesting to watch how that
(07:16):
business model ends up playing out, you know what I mean,
Just in terms of the ease of changing. It's not
like when you want to change your cell phone, you
have to go you know, it's everybody knows. It's like
fifty fresh layers of hell. So this is so easy
to move as a consumer from platform to platform in
order to get the various benefits. I find myself doing
it quite often as a matter of fact, depending on
(07:37):
who's in the lead. So I think that's an interesting
part that I'd like to I just want to see
what's going to happen next with that.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So we are seeing that the switching costs are effectively
zero between these different tools, which is keeping that competition
very very tight. We are seeing a general flight increase
in conversion from unpaid use to paid subscriptions more or
lesser cost of the board for the vast majority of
the tools that we're surveyed, but it's sort of a
gradual process. A lot of folks are still using these
(08:06):
sort of unpaid versions of these different tools and reporting
that they're mixing and matching them off and using two
or three, sometimes preferring one for work and one for
their personal use, or one for one type of use
case maybe writing, and another for a different use case
which might be research. So we are seeing that these
low switching costs really are encouraging people to try the
(08:28):
different tools out. Well.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I am one of those people, and I will keep
doing it until they prevent me from doing it. I
very much appreciate your time, Trevor Wagan. A very interesting conversation.
The report is fascinating and the graphs are stunning, and
I put a link to that study on the blog
today at mandysblog dot com.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Trevor, thanks so much, Thank you very much for having
me
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