AI Adoption at Work Flatlines as Gallup Survey Reveals Growing Use-Case Problem

AI adoption at work flatlines in Q4, says Gallup

AI adoption in the workplace stalled in the fourth quarter of 2025, but those who have already started using it are making increased use of it, according to a survey by pollster Gallup. Don't let that fool you into thinking AI is taking over work, though: frequent AI users are still a tiny minority of overall workers. Sharp increases in the workplace usage of AI throughout the year almost entirely leveled off between Q3 and Q4 2025, Gallup reported over the weekend. The total percentage of workers using AI climbed just a single percentage point in the final three months of the year, from 45 percent in Q3 to 46 percent. Similarly, respondents noting that their company had adopted AI hovered at 38 percent in Q4 - just a single percentage point higher than Q3 adoption numbers. That said, while AI adoption and usage were flat over the final quarter of 2025, the number of workers reporting frequent and daily usage of AI did increase. There was a three percent increase in frequent AI usage, defined as being a few times a week, and a two percent increase in daily AI usage. While greater than the overall one percent increase, those changes are still small, and it's also worth noting they comprise a vast minority of AI users overall. Per the responses, only 26 percent of workers are using AI frequently, and just 12 percent are using it daily. So who's jumping aboard? The results there aren't surprising either. Per Gallup, knowledge-based industries are dominating in AI usage, with the tech sector particularly fond of it - 77 percent of tech professionals report using AI in the workplace, with 57 percent doing so frequently and 31 percent using AI daily. University workers and finance professionals are also high adopters. Interestingly enough, workers in "remote-capable" roles, which Gallup defines as jobs that "could reasonably be completed remotely regardless of where the employee actually works," are big fans of AI, with 66 percent of them reporting using it in Q4. Far fewer employees in non-remote capable positions report using AI - just 32 percent - though that could be the nature of their jobs, as Gallup notes remote positions tend to be desk and office-based, while on-site jobs often involve more physical work. Leadership positions, which Gallup defines separately from managers and individual contributors and which tend to be desk- and office-based roles, are also more likely to use AI than other workers, the pollster said, while noting the gap between leadership and rest-of-the-workplace AI usage has widened in recent years. Taken as a whole, Gallup argues that the growing divide between users and non-users, and stagnating expansion, means that AI has a use-case problem. "Gallup research shows that lack of utility is the most common barrier to individual AI use, suggesting that clear AI use cases may be more apparent for leaders than employees in other roles," the polling agency concluded of its Q4 numbers. "This underscores the importance of grounding decisions about AI adoption in a clear understanding of how AI may be applied to different roles and functions, not just among those closest to decision-making," Gallup added. In other words, the C-suite ought to start thinking outside its own experience on AI adoption, because the average employee doesn't seem to find it particularly useful. That, or they're realizing AI isn't saving them any time, and may even be eating up more of it. ®

How Americans are using AI at work, according to a new Gallup poll

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. Home Depot store associate Gene Walinski is one of the employees embracing AI at work. The 70-year-old turns to an AI assistant on his personal phone roughly every hour on his shift so he can better answer questions about supplies that he is not "100% familiar with" at the store's electrical department in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. "I think my job would suffer if I couldn't because there would be a lot of shrugged shoulders and 'I don't know' and customers don't want to hear that," Walinski said. AI at work for many in technology, finance and education 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. In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to review. Tanzi, who works for Bank of America in New York, said he also makes uses of the bank's internal AI chatbot, Erica, to help with administrative tasks. In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least a few times a year. Joyce Hatzidakis, 60, a high school art teacher in Riverside, California, started experimenting with AI chatbots to help "clean up" her communications with parents. "I can scribble out a note and not worry about what I say and then tell it what tone I want," she said. "And then, when I reread it, if it's not quite right, I can have it edited again. I'm definitely getting less parent complaints." Another Gallup Workforce survey from last year found that about 6 in 10 employees using AI are relying on chatbots or virtual assistance when they turn to AI tools. About 4 in 10 AI users at work reported using AI to consolidate information or data, to generate ideas or to learn new things. Hatzidakis started with ChatGPT and then switched to Google's Gemini when the school district made that its official tool. She has even used it to help with recommendation letters because "there's only so many ways to say a kid is really creative." The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computing systems. But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or affect employment prospects. "Most of the workers that are most highly exposed to AI, who are most likely to have it disrupt their workflows, for good or for bad, have these characteristics that make them pretty adaptable," said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI usage "usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if you lose your job," Manning said. On the other hand, Manning's research has identified some 6.1 million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers. "If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills to other jobs and they have a lower savings, if any savings," Manning said. "An income shock could be much more harmful or difficult to manage." Few workers are concerned about AI replacing them 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. Not worried about losing his job is the Rev. Michael Bingham, pastor of the Faith Community Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. A chatbot fed him "gibberish" when he asked about the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury, and Bingham said he would never ask a "soulless" machine to help write his sermons, relying instead on "the power of God" to help guide him through ideas. "You don't want a machine, you want a human being, to hold your hand if you're dying," Bingham said. "And you want to know that your loved one was able to hold the hand of a loving human being who cared for them." Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as retail, health care or manufacturing. Home Depot did not ask Walinski to use AI when he got a job at the store last year, after a decades-long career in the car business. But the home improvement giant also did not try to stop him and he is "not at all worried" that AI will replace him. "The human interface part is really what a store like mine works on," Walinski said. "It's all about the people." -- - O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Sanders from Washington. -- - Gallup's quarterly workforce surveys were conducted with a random sample of adults age 18 and older who work full time and part time for organizations in the United States and are members of Gallup's probability-based Gallup Panel. The most recent survey of 22,368 employed U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1 percentage point.

AI chatbot hype is real, but daily use at work remains limited

AI agents are everywhere right now. They write emails, draft code, summarise documents, and promise to make work faster and smarter. From boardrooms to classrooms, the hype makes it sound like artificial intelligence has already become a daily work companion for most people, even as studies suggest AI is still not quite ready for everyday office work. A new Gallup survey suggests the reality inside workplaces is quite different. According to Gallup's latest Workforce survey, only 12% of employed adults in the US say they use AI every day at work. About one quarter use it frequently, meaning a few times a week, while nearly half of them say they use AI only a few times a year. Even though it is a clear jump from 2023, when just 21% employees admitted to using AI at least occasionally, it also shows that AI is still far from being an everyday tool for most workers. According to another study, humans still tend to outperform AI when it comes to higher-level creativity. How AI Use Varies by Industry and Role Type The survey highlights how uneven AI adoption really is. Usage is highest in technology-related roles, where around 6 in 10 workers say they use AI frequently, and about 3 in 10 use it daily. Finance and education also show higher adoption, with workers using AI to review documents, generate ideas, or tidy up written communication. Recommended Videos A high school art teacher, for example, told TechXplore that she uses chatbots to refine emails to parents and even help draft recommendation letters, saving time and reducing complaints. Outside those fields, AI use drops sharply. Workers in retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and other service-based roles are far less likely to use AI tools as part of their daily routine. Even when employees do use AI, most rely on chatbots or virtual assistants rather than more advanced systems, and many turn to them only occasionally. Meanwhile, Gallup's data also shows that fear has not caught up with the hype. Many workers also say it is unlikely that AI will replace their jobs in the next five years, though that confidence has slipped slightly since 2023. Taken together, the findings paint a clear picture. AI is spreading quickly, but for now, it remains a useful side tool for many workers, not a daily necessity.

A quarter of employed adults use AI at least a few times a week, with 6 in 10 tech workers using it frequently, Gallup says | Fortune

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. Home Depot store associate Gene Walinski is one of the employees embracing AI at work. The 70-year-old turns to an AI assistant on his personal phone roughly every hour on his shift so he can better answer questions about supplies that he is not "100% familiar with" at the store's electrical department in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. "I think my job would suffer if I couldn't because there would be a lot of shrugged shoulders and 'I don't know' and customers don't want to hear that," Walinski said. AI at work for many in technology, finance and education 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. In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to review. Tanzi, who works for Bank of America in New York, said he also makes uses of the bank's internal AI chatbot, Erica, to help with administrative tasks. In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least a few times a year. Joyce Hatzidakis, 60, a high school art teacher in Riverside, California, started experimenting with AI chatbots to help "clean up" her communications with parents. "I can scribble out a note and not worry about what I say and then tell it what tone I want," she said. "And then, when I reread it, if it's not quite right, I can have it edited again. I'm definitely getting less parent complaints." Another Gallup Workforce survey from last year found that about 6 in 10 employees using AI are relying on chatbots or virtual assistance when they turn to AI tools. About 4 in 10 AI users at work reported using AI to consolidate information or data, to generate ideas or to learn new things. Hatzidakis started with ChatGPT and then switched to Google's Gemini when the school district made that its official tool. She has even used it to help with recommendation letters because "there's only so many ways to say a kid is really creative." The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computingsystems. But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or affect employment prospects. "Most of the workers that are most highly exposed to AI, who are most likely to have it disrupt their workflows, for good or for bad, have these characteristics that make them pretty adaptable," said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI usage "usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if you lose your job," Manning said. On the other hand, Manning's research has identified some 6.1 million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers. "If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills to other jobs and they have a lower savings, if any savings," Manning said. "An income shock could be much more harmful or difficult to manage." Few workers are concerned about AI replacing them 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. Not worried about losing his job is the Rev. Michael Bingham, pastor of the Faith Community Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. A chatbot fed him "gibberish" when he asked about the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury, and Bingham said he would never ask a "soulless" machine to help write his sermons, relying instead on "the power of God" to help guide him through ideas. "You don't want a machine, you want a human being, to hold your hand if you're dying," Bingham said. "And you want to know that your loved one was able to hold the hand of a loving human being who cared for them." Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as retail, health care or manufacturing. Home Depot did not ask Walinski to use AI when he got a job at the store last year, after a decades-long career in the car business. But the home improvement giant also did not try to stop him and he is "not at all worried" that AI will replace him. "The human interface part is really what a store like mine works on," Walinski said. "It's all about the people." -- - O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Sanders from Washington. -- - Gallup's quarterly workforce surveys were conducted with a random sample of adults age 18 and older who work full time and part time for organizations in the United States and are members of Gallup's probability-based Gallup Panel. The most recent survey of 22,368 employed U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1 percentage point.

How Americans are using AI at work, according to a new Gallup poll

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. Home Depot store associate Gene Walinski is one of the employees embracing AI at work. The 70-year-old turns to an AI assistant on his personal phone roughly every hour on his shift so he can better answer questions about supplies that he is not "100% familiar with" at the store's electrical department in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. "I think my job would suffer if I couldn't because there would be a lot of shrugged shoulders and 'I don't know' and customers don't want to hear that," Walinski said. AI at work for many in technology, finance and education 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. In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to review. Tanzi, who works for Bank of America in New York, said he also makes uses of the bank's internal AI chatbot, Erica, to help with administrative tasks. In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least a few times a year. Joyce Hatzidakis, 60, a high school art teacher in Riverside, California, started experimenting with AI chatbots to help "clean up" her communications with parents. "I can scribble out a note and not worry about what I say and then tell it what tone I want," she said. "And then, when I reread it, if it's not quite right, I can have it edited again. I'm definitely getting less parent complaints." Another Gallup Workforce survey from last year found that about 6 in 10 employees using AI are relying on chatbots or virtual assistance when they turn to AI tools. About 4 in 10 AI users at work reported using AI to consolidate information or data, to generate ideas or to learn new things. Hatzidakis started with ChatGPT and then switched to Google's Gemini when the school district made that its official tool. She has even used it to help with recommendation letters because "there's only so many ways to say a kid is really creative." The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computing systems. But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or affect employment prospects. "Most of the workers that are most highly exposed to AI, who are most likely to have it disrupt their workflows, for good or for bad, have these characteristics that make them pretty adaptable," said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI usage "usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if you lose your job," Manning said. On the other hand, Manning's research has identified some 6.1 million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers. "If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills to other jobs and they have a lower savings, if any savings," Manning said. "An income shock could be much more harmful or difficult to manage." Few workers are concerned about AI replacing them 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. Not worried about losing his job is the Rev. Michael Bingham, pastor of the Faith Community Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. A chatbot fed him "gibberish" when he asked about the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury, and Bingham said he would never ask a "soulless" machine to help write his sermons, relying instead on "the power of God" to help guide him through ideas. "You don't want a machine, you want a human being, to hold your hand if you're dying," Bingham said. "And you want to know that your loved one was able to hold the hand of a loving human being who cared for them." Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as retail, health care or manufacturing. Home Depot did not ask Walinski to use AI when he got a job at the store last year, after a decades-long career in the car business. But the home improvement giant also did not try to stop him and he is "not at all worried" that AI will replace him. "The human interface part is really what a store like mine works on," Walinski said. "It's all about the people." -- - O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Sanders from Washington. -- - Gallup's quarterly workforce surveys were conducted with a random sample of adults age 18 and older who work full time and part time for organizations in the United States and are members of Gallup's probability-based Gallup Panel. The most recent survey of 22,368 employed U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1 percentage point.

How Americans Are Using AI at Work, According to a New Gallup Poll

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. Home Depot store associate Gene Walinski is one of the employees embracing AI at work. The 70-year-old turns to an AI assistant on his personal phone roughly every hour on his shift so he can better answer questions about supplies that he is not "100% familiar with" at the store's electrical department in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. "I think my job would suffer if I couldn't because there would be a lot of shrugged shoulders and 'I don't know' and customers don't want to hear that," Walinski said. AI at work for many in technology, finance and education 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. In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to review. Tanzi, who works for Bank of America in New York, said he also makes uses of the bank's internal AI chatbot, Erica, to help with administrative tasks. In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least a few times a year. Joyce Hatzidakis, 60, a high school art teacher in Riverside, California, started experimenting with AI chatbots to help "clean up" her communications with parents. "I can scribble out a note and not worry about what I say and then tell it what tone I want," she said. "And then, when I reread it, if it's not quite right, I can have it edited again. I'm definitely getting less parent complaints." Another Gallup Workforce survey from last year found that about 6 in 10 employees using AI are relying on chatbots or virtual assistance when they turn to AI tools. About 4 in 10 AI users at work reported using AI to consolidate information or data, to generate ideas or to learn new things. Hatzidakis started with ChatGPT and then switched to Google's Gemini when the school district made that its official tool. She has even used it to help with recommendation letters because "there's only so many ways to say a kid is really creative." The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computing systems. But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or affect employment prospects. "Most of the workers that are most highly exposed to AI, who are most likely to have it disrupt their workflows, for good or for bad, have these characteristics that make them pretty adaptable," said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI usage "usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if you lose your job," Manning said. On the other hand, Manning's research has identified some 6.1 million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers. "If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills to other jobs and they have a lower savings, if any savings," Manning said. "An income shock could be much more harmful or difficult to manage." Few workers are concerned about AI replacing them 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. Not worried about losing his job is the Rev. Michael Bingham, pastor of the Faith Community Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. A chatbot fed him "gibberish" when he asked about the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury, and Bingham said he would never ask a "soulless" machine to help write his sermons, relying instead on "the power of God" to help guide him through ideas. "You don't want a machine, you want a human being, to hold your hand if you're dying," Bingham said. "And you want to know that your loved one was able to hold the hand of a loving human being who cared for them." Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as retail, health care or manufacturing. Home Depot did not ask Walinski to use AI when he got a job at the store last year, after a decades-long career in the car business. But the home improvement giant also did not try to stop him and he is "not at all worried" that AI will replace him. "The human interface part is really what a store like mine works on," Walinski said. "It's all about the people." -- - O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Sanders from Washington. -- - Gallup's quarterly workforce surveys were conducted with a random sample of adults age 18 and older who work full time and part time for organizations in the United States and are members of Gallup's probability-based Gallup Panel. The most recent survey of 22,368 employed U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1 percentage point.

How Americans are using AI at work, according to a new Gallup poll

American workers are using artificial intelligence at work, with many now relying on it daily for writing, research and admin tasks. Use is highest in technology, finance and education, while service jobs lag behind. Most workers are not afraid of losing jobs, though some roles face higher risk future. 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. Home Depot store associate Gene Walinski is one of the employees embracing AI at work. The 70-year-old turns to an AI assistant on his personal phone roughly every hour on his shift so he can better answer questions about supplies that he is not "100% familiar with" at the store's electrical department in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. "I think my job would suffer if I couldn't because there would be a lot of shrugged shoulders and 'I don't know' and customers don't want to hear that," Walinski said. AI at work for many in technology, finance and education 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. In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to review. Tanzi, who works for Bank of America in New York, said he also makes uses of the bank's internal AI chatbot, Erica, to help with administrative tasks. In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least a few times a year. Joyce Hatzidakis, 60, a high school art teacher in Riverside, California, started experimenting with AI chatbots to help "clean up" her communications with parents. "I can scribble out a note and not worry about what I say and then tell it what tone I want," she said. "And then, when I reread it, if it's not quite right, I can have it edited again. I'm definitely getting less parent complaints." Another Gallup Workforce survey from last year found that about 6 in 10 employees using AI are relying on chatbots or virtual assistance when they turn to AI tools. About 4 in 10 AI users at work reported using AI to consolidate information or data, to generate ideas or to learn new things. Hatzidakis started with ChatGPT and then switched to Google's Gemini when the school district made that its official tool. She has even used it to help with recommendation letters because "there's only so many ways to say a kid is really creative." The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computing systems. But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or affect employment prospects. "Most of the workers that are most highly exposed to AI, who are most likely to have it disrupt their workflows, for good or for bad, have these characteristics that make them pretty adaptable," said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI usage "usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if you lose your job," Manning said. On the other hand, Manning's research has identified some 6.1 million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers. "If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills to other jobs and they have a lower savings, if any savings," Manning said. "An income shock could be much more harmful or difficult to manage." Few workers are concerned about AI replacing them 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. Not worried about losing his job is the Rev. Michael Bingham, pastor of the Faith Community Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. A chatbot fed him "gibberish" when he asked about the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury, and Bingham said he would never ask a "soulless" machine to help write his sermons, relying instead on "the power of God" to help guide him through ideas. "You don't want a machine, you want a human being, to hold your hand if you're dying," Bingham said. "And you want to know that your loved one was able to hold the hand of a loving human being who cared for them." Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as retail, health care or manufacturing. Home Depot did not ask Walinski to use AI when he got a job at the store last year, after a decades-long career in the car business. But the home improvement giant also did not try to stop him and he is "not at all worried" that AI will replace him. "The human interface part is really what a store like mine works on," Walinski said. "It's all about the people."

How Americans are using AI - Gallup

American workers have embraced artificial intelligence at a remarkable pace over the past few years, according to a new Gallup poll that highlights how AI tools have become embedded in daily work routines across multiple industries. The Associated Press reports AI adoption has increased significantly; 12% use it daily, nearly half use it at least yearly, and usage has doubled since 2023. Technology workers lead in AI use, but exposure is widespread; vulnerable groups like older, female clerical workers in smaller cities face higher risk from automation. Most workers are not highly concerned; 50% say job loss from AI is not likely, though that confidence has slightly declined since 2023.