2 ms·

They show two different surveys that are supposed to show the same underlying truth but differ by a factor of 3x? For the Ramp survey: why the sudden jump from

They show two different surveys that are supposed to show the same underlying truth but differ by a factor of 3x? For the Ramp survey: why the sudden jump from 30% to 50% in March? For the Census one: How could it possibly be that only 12% of companies with more than 250 people „adopted“ (whatever that means) AI? It would be interesting if it were true but these charts don’t make any sense at all to me

tripletao 11mo ago
The Census Bureau asks if firms are using AI "to help produce goods or services". I guess that's intended to exclude not-yet-productive investigations, and maybe also indirect uses--does LLM-powered OCR for the expense reports for the travelling sales representatives for a widget factory count? That's all vague enough that I guess it works mostly as a sentiment check, where the absolute value isn't meaningful but the time trend might be. The Ramp chart seems to use actual payment information from companies using their accounting platform. That should be more objective, though they don't disclose much about their methodology (and their customers aren't necessarily representative, the purpose and intensity of use aren't captured at all, etc.). https://ramp.com/data/ai-index https://ramp.com/data/ai-index
- ac29 11mo ago
  > The Census Bureau asks if firms are using AI "to help produce goods or services" That's odd. I use AI tools at work occasionally, but since our business involves selling physical goods, I guess we would not count as an AI adopter in this survey.
  - tripletao 11mo ago
    After more investigation, I'm not sure what question was asked. I quoted that exact language from Apollo, and the Census Bureau uses very similar language in the spreadsheet with the aggregated responses, at https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/Employment%20Size%20Class.xlsx https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/Employment%20Size%... I'm unable to find a questionnaire with that language, though. I found a different questionnaire with many AI-related questions, some of which I believe would usefully capture both your situation and my hypothetical above. None closely match that language, though. The closest might be question 23, but that asks about use "in any of its business functions". https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/business-trends-and-outlook-survey/questionnaire-ai-supplement.pdf https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/busi...
    - tripletao 11mo ago
      After yet more investigation, I think I found the questionnaire. Question 7 asks: > Between MMM DD – MMM DD, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in producing goods or services? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.) https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/business-trends-and-outlook-survey/questionnaire.pdf https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/busi... This closely tracks Apollo's language and the language in the results spreadsheet.

tripletao 11mo ago

The Census Bureau asks if firms are using AI "to help produce goods or services". I guess that's intended to exclude not-yet-productive investigations, and maybe also indirect uses--does LLM-powered OCR for the expense reports for the travelling sales representatives for a widget factory count? That's all vague enough that I guess it works mostly as a sentiment check, where the absolute value isn't meaningful but the time trend might be. The Ramp chart seems to use actual payment information from companies using their accounting platform. That should be more objective, though they don't disclose much about their methodology (and their customers aren't necessarily representative, the purpose and intensity of use aren't captured at all, etc.). https://ramp.com/data/ai-index https://ramp.com/data/ai-index

ac29 11mo ago
> The Census Bureau asks if firms are using AI "to help produce goods or services" That's odd. I use AI tools at work occasionally, but since our business involves selling physical goods, I guess we would not count as an AI adopter in this survey.
- tripletao 11mo ago
  After more investigation, I'm not sure what question was asked. I quoted that exact language from Apollo, and the Census Bureau uses very similar language in the spreadsheet with the aggregated responses, at https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/Employment%20Size%20Class.xlsx https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/Employment%20Size%... I'm unable to find a questionnaire with that language, though. I found a different questionnaire with many AI-related questions, some of which I believe would usefully capture both your situation and my hypothetical above. None closely match that language, though. The closest might be question 23, but that asks about use "in any of its business functions". https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/business-trends-and-outlook-survey/questionnaire-ai-supplement.pdf https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/busi...
  - tripletao 11mo ago
    After yet more investigation, I think I found the questionnaire. Question 7 asks: > Between MMM DD – MMM DD, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in producing goods or services? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.) https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/business-trends-and-outlook-survey/questionnaire.pdf https://www2.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/busi... This closely tracks Apollo's language and the language in the results spreadsheet.