81% of college students, 62% of employees in APAC use generative AI: Deloitte report

Young generation and developing countries more open to using generative AI

By Anna J. Park

A survey has found that university students and corporate employees frequently use generative AI in their lives at remarkably high rates across the Asia-Pacific region.

According to Deloitte Korea’s latest report, “Current status and implications of generative AI usage in the Asia-Pacific region,” 81 percent of college students and 62 percent of employees surveyed are utilizing generative AI programs.

In particular, employees aged 18 to 24 are nearly twice as likely to use generative AI compared to their middle-aged and older counterparts. This suggests that age group and early exposure to digital technology are key drivers in the adoption of generative AI.

For the report, released Tuesday, Deloitte Korea conducted a massive survey of 2,903 university students and 9,042 corporate employees across 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, China, India, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, New Zealand and Southeast Asia — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam — in February and March this year.

It’s also noteworthy that developing countries are ahead of more advanced countries in the APAC region in the adoption of generative AI. For instance, 87 percent of respondents in India and 76 percent of the surveyed in Southeast Asia said they use generative AI, while only 39 percent of respondents in Japan reported using generative AI.

As to the proportion of people actively responding to the trend of generative AI transformation, India and China also stood out with over 70 percent of the respondents positively answering, while Japan fell short at 30 percent.

The report forecast that in five years, 32 percent of population in the APAC region will use generative AI daily. Furthermore, about 11 billion hours of working time would be positively influenced by generative AI, as the AI technology will influence 61 percent of their work over the next five years.

The four industries most expected to undergo significant changes due to the generative AI technology include finance, information and communication technology and media, professional services, and education sectors, which collectively comprise about 20 percent of the Asia-Pacific economy.

“It is expected that startups and scale-up companies, which are proactive in adopting innovation and less constrained by large-scale systems, would lead the innovation in generative AI,” Deloitte Korea said.