Generative AI in the Enterprise –

Methodology and Demographics

This survey ran from September 14, 2023, to September 27, 2023. It was publicized through O’Reilly’s learning platform to all our users, both corporate and individuals. We received 4,782 responses, of which 2,857 answered all the questions. As we usually do, we eliminated incomplete responses (users who dropped out part way through the questions). Respondents who indicated they weren’t using generative AI were asked a final question about why they weren’t using it, and considered complete.

Any survey only gives a partial picture, and it’s very important to think about biases. The biggest bias by far is the nature of O’Reilly’s audience, which is predominantly North American and European. 42% of the respondents were from North America, 32% were from Europe, and 21% percent were from the Asia-Pacific region. Relatively few respondents were from South America or Africa, although we are aware of very interesting applications of AI on these continents.

The responses are also skewed by the industries that use our platform most heavily. 34% of all respondents who completed the survey were from the software industry, and another 11% worked on computer hardware, together making up almost half of the respondents. 14% were in financial services, which is another area where our platform has many users. 5% of the respondents were from telecommunications, 5% from the public sector and the government, 4.4% from the healthcare industry, and 3.7% from education. These are still healthy numbers: there were over 100 respondents in each group. The remaining 22% represented other industries, ranging from mining (0.1%) and construction (0.2%) to manufacturing (2.6%).

These percentages change very little if you look only at respondents whose employers use AI rather than all respondents who completed the survey. This suggests that AI usage doesn’t depend a lot on the specific industry; the differences between industries reflects the population of O’Reilly’s user base.