Anthropic is launching an AI Economic Index aimed at understanding the technology’s effects on labor markets and the economy over time. The Anthropic Economic Index kicks off with a report that indicates the most concentrated uses of AI today are in software development and technical writing tasks. The information was culled by analyzing data from millions of anonymized conversations on Claude.ai with the goal of revealing how AI is being incorporated into real-world tasks across global markets. It also found that AI usage trends more toward augmenting human capabilities (57 percent), compared to using it for automation (43 percent).

While AI “is not yet broadly automating entire jobs, it is being widely used to augment specific tasks,” including business analysis, writes VentureBeat, which gives the inaugural Index report high marks, calling it “not just hype” because “unlike previous studies that have relied on expert predictions or self-reported surveys, Anthropic’s research is based on direct analysis of how workers are actually using AI.”

Among the key findings reported by Anthropic in a news post:

• Over one-third of occupations use AI to assist in at least a quarter of their associated tasks (roughly 36 percent), while only about 4 percent of occupations include heavy users, who apply AI across 75 percent of their associated tasks.
• AI is used more frequently in tasks associated with mid-to-high wage occupations, including computer programming and data science. But it is lower not only for the lowest-paid roles, but also the highest paid. “This likely reflects both the limits of current AI capabilities, as well as practical barriers to using the technology,” Anthropic says.
• Arts and Media users rank second in terms of frequency of use (10.3 percent) following Computer Science and Mathematical (37.2 percent). The third most prevalent category is Education and Libraries (9.3 percent).

“Anthropic uses its own tool called Clio to collect and analyze Claude usage data while preserving users’ privacy,” according to Axios, which interviewed Deep Ganguli, leader of Anthropic’s societal impacts team.

“It’s a sample of around a million conversations over a seven-day period that people are having with Claude AI, and we filter that sample down to only conversations that are actually about work,” Ganguli told Axios, which reports that “Anthropic plans to run follow-ups every six months to track changes in AI use over time.”

Anthropic is open sourcing the dataset used for the Index analysis, so researchers can build on and extend the findings. “Developing policy responses to address the coming transformation in the labor market and its effects on employment and productivity will take a range of perspectives. To that end, we are also inviting economists, policy experts, and other researchers to provide input,” Anthropic says.