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The short answer: a lot. And at least the top executives say it is paying off.

It’s one of the fundamental questions about generative AI: Can companies put it to good use? One answer comes from a new survey by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which found that business leaders went all in on generative AI in the past year, and they say it is paying off.

If there was any doubt about corporate leaders’ comfort with AI, the report indicates that doubt is no longer a factor; 82% of the executives say they personally use generative AI once a week, and 46% now use it daily. In 2023, the first year of the survey, fewer than 37% said they used it once a week.

The annual survey, conducted this summer by Wharton and marketing consulting firm GBK Collective, covers 800 business leaders at companies with more than 1,000 employees and $50 million in revenue.

The survey also finds 72% of executives say their companies formally measure their return on investment from generative AI, and roughly 3 in 4 say they see positive returns.

The report also provides an optimistic signal that generative AI may not wipe out the entry-level job. Senior leaders expect generative AI to have its biggest impact on interns and entry-level workers, but substantially more senior leaders expect AI to create more hiring at these levels. For instance, 17% say they expect to hire fewer interns, but 49% expect to hire more interns; 18% expect fewer hires for entry-level or junior positions, while 40% expect more.

That said, senior leaders are at times more enthusiastic about generative AI than the middle managers below them. Almost half of the top leaders—those with titles of “vice president” or higher—say they are seeing significantly positive ROI, while only 27% of middle managers do; middle managers are twice as likely to say it is too early to tell. Senior leaders are also twice as likely as middle managers to believe their own organizations are adopting generative AI much faster than other organizations.

To dive more deeply into what the survey found—and what it means—we talked to Stefano Puntoni, a Wharton professor of marketing who co-authored the report along with Jeremy Korst, partner at GBK Collective, and Prasanna Tambe, a professor of operations, information and decisions at Wharton. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

WSJ: Why do senior leaders seem more enthusiastic about implementing AI than middle managers?

STEFANO PUNTONI: Leaders probably have the bigger overview of what is going on in the organization. On the other hand, people who are a little bit below that level, they might feel a bit squished between bottom-up and top-down pressure. They might feel more threatened by the technology than the VP level. The VP, on the other hand, may be overoptimistic, because they are the ones making these decisions about big deployment, and therefore they might try very hard to see the positive.

WSJ: Could it also be that sometimes the senior leaders are more about the vision but it’s up to the lower-level managers to carry out the mission?

PUNTONI: It could be that the people who are at the top tend to be thinking about longer term. They may report a greater level of optimism because they’re projecting two, three, five years out. People who are a bit further down, they have more of a concrete mindset about the thing they need to do next week.

There is also probably the pressure of people who’ve been tasked with implementing a technology feeling like this is actually more creating friction for me right now than giving me benefits. This might make it better later on, but right now, it’s just more work.

WSJ: So much of the conversation around AI revolves around whether it will replace jobs or enhance existing jobs. What was the prevailing sentiment on that in your study?

PUNTONI: We tapped into that kind of question in a bunch of different sections of the report. One question was, to what extent do you believe that this technology is going to complement employee skills or replace employee skills? What we saw in 2023, people reported very high levels of both beliefs about replacement and enhancement. By 2024, we saw that shifting to significantly more people endorsed beliefs about human enhancement. This year we see no change: About 90% believe AI will complement employee skills.

WSJ: What about the concerns that AI will eliminate the need for lots of entry-level jobs?

PUNTONI: Senior people tell us that Gen AI will have more of a net-positive impact on junior positions than on senior people [helping them do their jobs better or create new jobs]. So it seems, looking at our data, like the picture for entry-level positions might not be that bad. That surprised me.

WSJ: Why were you surprised by that?

PUNTONI: The conversations in the media about entry-level positions have been very negative. My son is in high school, and last week, he had a bit of existential anxiety about his job prospects. He was saying, why should I study for the test? I’m never going to get a job anyway. I was trying to explain to him that I don’t think that there will be no opportunities for junior people. It’s just that these opportunities are going to change. So what you need to be able to show an organization is that you can work with this technology. I think he feels better now.

WSJ: How much of leaders’ enthusiasm for, and investments in, AI is looking over your shoulder at competitors and FOMO?

PUNTONI: There is some of that. There is a sense that for some companies, they’re adopting AI faster with a lack of vision or strategy.

One issue that I have with a lot of the conversations in business about generative AI is that we’ve been focusing so much on productivity. And when you talk about productivity, it’s almost like a code word for cost-cutting.

Companies ought to be as efficient as possible. But I think in the long run, even in the medium run, actually, this technology is only going to give results where we are imagining new things to do. I’m a marketing professor, and I get excited about productivity, but I get more excited about what kind of new customer experiences we can create. What kind of new products and services can we generate? What kind of better, stronger customer relationships can we forge using this technology? To me, that is the kind of thing that, in the end, is going to lead to sustained growth, rather than simply throwing money at AI because everyone else is doing it and they don’t want to get left behind.

WSJ: What did you learn about general usage?

PUNTONI: We switched to tracking daily use from weekly use because basically so many people are using it. A large amount of people are building comfort, familiarity and certainly a degree of expertise. This technology is permeating a workplace to a very high degree.

The top-rated use cases tend to be general productivity tools, like data analysis, meeting summation and writing. That’s the bread and butter of knowledge work. The fact that those are the top three tells you this is not a technology that is going to have a narrow impact on a particular function of a particular industry, but it’s going to have a wide impact across the economy.