From Exposure to Adoption: Generative AI in European Workplaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates the adoption patterns of generative AI in European workplaces, analyzing factors influencing uptake and its initial impact on job tasks across 35 countries.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of generative AI adoption drivers and early effects on job content in European countries.

Findings

Adoption rates range from under 3% to 25% across countries.

Occupational exposure and skills significantly predict AI adoption.

No detectable effect of AI adoption on task restructuring at this stage.

Abstract

This study examines who adopts generative AI and whether early adoption has begun to reshape the task content of jobs across 35 European countries. Adoption ranges from under 3% to 25%. Occupational exposure strongly predicts uptake, but AI does not diffuse passively along exposure lines. At the worker level, skills, abstract task content, and employee organisational influence steepen the exposure-adoption gradient; at the country level, so do digitalisation and workplace training. A gender gap persists, concentrated in the most exposed occupations. A shift-share design finds no detectable effect of adoption on worker-reported task restructuring, consistent with an initial integration phase.