AI Use at Work Has Increased, Gallup Poll Finds
6 53An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: American workers adopted artificial intelligence into their work lives at a remarkable pace over the past few years, according to a new poll. Some 12% of employed adults say they use AI daily in their job, according to a Gallup Workforce survey conducted this fall of more than 22,000 U.S. workers.
The survey found roughly one-quarter say they use AI at least frequently, which is defined as at least a few times a week, and nearly half say they use it at least a few times a year. That compares with 21% who were using AI at least occasionally in 2023, when Gallup began asking the question, and points to the impact of the widespread commercial boom that ChatGPT sparked for generative AI tools that can write emails and computer code, summarize long documents, create images or help answer questions...
While frequent AI use is on the rise with many employees, AI adoption remains higher among those working in technology-related fields. About 6 in 10 technology workers say they use AI frequently, and about 3 in 10 do so daily. The share of Americans working in the technology sector who say they use AI daily or regularly has grown significantly since 2023, but there are indications that AI adoption could be starting to plateau after an explosive increase between 2024 and 2025...
A separate Gallup Workforce survey from 2025 found that even as AI use is increasing, few employees said it was "very" or "somewhat" likely that new technology, automation, robots or AI will eliminate their job within the next five years. Half said it was "not at all likely," but that has decreased from about 6 in 10 in 2023.
A bar chart lists the sectors most likely to be using AI at their jobs:
- Technology (77%)
- Finance (64%)
- College/University (63%)
- Professional Services (62%)
- K-12 Education (56%)
- Community/Social Services (43%)
- Government/Public Policy (42%)
- Manufacturing (41%)
- Health Care (41%)
- Retail (33%)
6 comments
Now do ... (Score: 5, Funny)
by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @06:55PM (#65961748)
How many ... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by evanh ( 627108 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:07PM (#65961758)
... just use it as a, power wasting, search engine?
Leading to deskilling and unfixed bugs (Score: 5, Informative)
by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:10PM (#65961762)
It's not like the makers of LLM-based coding tools wouldn't know what the consequences will be, to cite https://www.anthropic.com/rese... [anthropic.com]
On average, participants in the AI group finished about two minutes faster, although the difference was not statistically significant. There was, however, a significant difference in test scores: the AI group averaged 50% on the quiz, compared to 67% in the hand-coding group—or the equivalent of nearly two letter grades (Cohen's d=0.738, p=0.01). The largest gap in scores between the two groups was on debugging questions, suggesting that the ability to understand when code is incorrect and why it fails may be a particular area of concern if AI impedes coding development. [...] Given time constraints and organizational pressures, junior developers or other professionals may rely on AI to complete tasks as fast as possible at the cost of skill development—and notably the ability to debug issues when something goes wrong.
This is exactly what will happen: More AI-Slop produced faster, with more bugs that never get fixed. And skilled IT personnel being replaced by unskilled prompt-monkeys, because cheaper.
Adoption != Positive Impact (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:23PM (#65961782)
I've seen many people comment on other discussion platforms they are using AI simply because the leadership at their employer is requiring it. And many of those comments follow up with how the results of the AI usage are not helpful, or worse, require checking/correcting work and resulting in a net negative for productivity verses if they had just done it themselves.
Re:Adoption != Positive Impact (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Hasaf ( 3744357 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:09PM (#65961968)
As a teacher I use it quite a bit. I have the requirement to rewrite my lesson plans every two years. This is about filling in boxes on a form, which regularly changes in order to insure that the biannual rewrites are not just a copy and paste activity.
It is about rechecking the state standards codes, they are frequently revised even though there is little fundamental change, just the codes. These are the things AI is a great help for. I have them done without ever having to look at them and admin can check and see that they are done and revised on schedule.
My real lesson plans are entirely different documents. I used to put them at the bottom of my lesson plans until I was told that what I was putting on the plan were "lesson notes," which have no place on a "lesson plan."
So, AI is useful for doing things that have no need to be done, but are required to be done.
Re:Very good for novices, but reinforces bad habit (Score: 5, Insightful)
by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:32PM (#65961798)
AI is very good for novices, people who don't know something well.
There is plenty of evidence already that novices using AI will remain novices, rather than develop advanced skills. So yes, as a "novice", you can get to some result quicker by using AI, but the result will be that of a "fool with a tool", and your next work's result won't be better, because you didn't learn anything.