Anthropic’s Economic Index Report Shows Uneven AI Adoption

Anthopic published its Economic Index report on Monday, revealing uneven AI adoption across the world and highlighting the faster uptake of AI compared to previous technological innovations.

According to Anthropic’s analysis, the company’s latest report on the use of its chatbot Claude unveils different behaviors and purposes among users and businesses. One of the main findings is the speed at which generative AI is being adopted.

In the United States, just 20% of employees reported using the chatbot at work in 2023, but that number doubled to 40% this year. The report compares this pace with earlier technologies: while electricity and computers took decades to become widespread, and even the Internet required several years to diffuse, generative AI adoption has doubled within only two years.

“Such rapid adoption reflects how useful this technology already is for a wide range of applications, its deployability on existing digital infrastructure, and its ease of use—by just typing or speaking—without specialized training,” states the document.

The report also shows how usage patterns have shifted. While coding remains the primary purpose for Claude—at 36% of users—educational tasks now account for 12.4%, about three percentage points higher than in the previous report. Scientific tasks also rose, from 6.3% to 7.2%.

Claude is now available across 150 countries, and this report marks the first time Anthropic has compared usage across regions. Using the Anthropic AI Usage Index (AUI), the analysis found that higher-income countries tend to use the technology more intensively and for augmentation, rather than mere automation.

“If the productivity gains are larger for high-adoption economies, current usage patterns suggest that the benefits of AI may concentrate in already-rich regions—possibly increasing global economic inequality and reversing growth convergence seen in recent decades,” states the document.

On the business side, Anthropic noted that companies accessing Claude via API rely more heavily on it for coding, while those using the web platform lean toward writing and educational purposes.

OpenAI also released a study on ChatGPT usage this week, offering insights into how its 700 million weekly active users interact with the tool.