92% of Young Professionals Say AI Boosts Confidence, But They Want More Personalization

92% of young professionals say AI boosts their confidence at work - how they use it

A Google Workspace study explored how young leaders use AI.Respondents emphasized the importance of personalized AI. Professional development is a top use case for AI. AI is transforming the workplace, giving professionals new ways to carry out their tasks. To understand the impact of this change, Google Workspace has published a survey that examines how next-generation leaders are using AI -- and the results are more nuanced than you might expect. Google Workspace's second annual 'Young Leaders' study, conducted by the Harris Poll, surveyed more than 1,000 full-time knowledge workers in the US aged 22 to 39 who hold, or aspire to hold, a leadership position at work. The research revealed trends about how these professionals are using AI at work, and what they want from their tools. Also: AI is shaking up IT work, careers, and businesses - and here's how to prepare "Young leaders, they really are the people who show where work is going in terms of what tools people are using, how they work," said Yulie Kwon Kim, vice president of product at Google Workspace, to ZDNET. "How they are now using AI tells us where a lot of things are going." While AI is typically associated with helping people with their hard skills, the technology is also assisting them with soft skills, such as career development. An overwhelming 92% of survey respondents reported that AI has increased confidence in their professional skills. Young leaders are using the technology as a thought partner to challenge their ideas and provide feedback, and even as a career coach. Also: Want a tech job? These skills will matter most in 2026, State of IT report shows The study found that "72% have used AI to answer a question they were hesitant to ask a colleague or manager, 71% have received advice for important professional conversations, and 69% have used AI to prepare for a career move, interview, or other job transition." "A lot of times you might do this with other people on your team, but sometimes people aren't just there when you need, on the fly or whenever is convenient for you, or sometimes you might be so early-stage that you just want to do a little bit privately, and now everyone has a potential collaborator to work with them on that," said Kwon Kim. AI tools have become increasingly valuable for career advice, as they not only have access to a vast amount of information but can also understand nuanced user queries and distill information in an easy-to-understand format. There is also the freedom of not having to worry about being judged by another person. Fiona Mark, principal analyst at research firm Forrester, said AI can play a valuable role in helping strengthen some leadership skills. Also: AI will cause 'jobs chaos' within the next few years, says Gartner "These AI coaches aim to offer a safe place to practice certain leadership skills for users, at scale, and make learning more interactive and valuable," said Mark. "While AI coaches currently do not have the insights and nuances that a human instructor has, they do, however, offer a form of experiential learning that can improve learning outcomes that are available at scale to many learners." Google's study also found that a majority of respondents (91%) expressed increased confidence in being able to contribute more than their role typically requires, and an overwhelming sense that AI literacy will be a critical skill for the future of work. While the young leaders seem to value AI tools, the survey showed they are selective in what they want them to offer, with 92% of young leaders seeking AI with personalization capabilities. Also: Anxious about AI job cuts? How white-collar workers can protect themselves - starting now AI-enabled personalization refers to creating content tailored to your user preferences, such as writing style, as well as providing experiences that incorporate your everyday information repositories, including calendars, emails, and more. The young leaders value this capability so much that 90% reported they would use AI at work more if it were increasingly personalized. As many as 90% of respondents suggested personalized AI-generated responses would save them time, and 88% said they would improve productivity. Kwon Kim says this is an indication of how much the perception of AI has changed in the past year. "I think a really big takeaway is that expectations have gone even higher, and that's why you saw in the poll results that personalization is really important to young leaders," said Kwon Kim. Also: 5 ways to feed your AI the right business data -- and get gold dust, not garbage back "There are so many different tools that can generate an email reply or just generate something, but in order for AI to be truly useful in someone's everyday work, it needs to be personalized." The respondents are even taking it upon themselves to personalize the AI tools, with 77% of respondents describing themselves as "active designers" of their AI workflows, and 85% confident in their ability to personalize their AI systems, according to the report. The study's results come at a time when distrust in AI technologies continues to grow. A recent Pew Research Study found that a median of 34% of adults say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI. In countries such as the United States, Italy, Australia, Brazil, and Greece, about half of adults reported being more concerned than excited, according to the researchers. Beyond mistrust, working professionals have also been deterred from using AI tools at work due to shame or the risk of producing subpar AI results. Recent research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab found that 40% of its survey's respondents reported receiving work slop in the past month, and half view workers who turn in work slop as less creative, reliable, and capable. "Employees, rightly, have a distrust of AI implementation in their workflows -- after all, this is a technology that leaders are claiming will reduce workforces and be highly efficient and productive, threatening the long-term job prospects of many white collar workers," added Mark. As a result, the confidence in AI tools and usage among young leaders may seem high. However, Kwon Kim said it's because this demographic is the most likely to fall under the early adopter category, driven by a desire to succeed. "I think these, in many ways, represent people who are really going to be more the early adopters on wanting to get ahead, to learn, to find the best tools possible, to help themselves," said Kwon Kim. "In some ways, that's the reason why it's interesting to me, is that they tend to show where things are going."

Gen Z wants more personalized responses from chatbots

Why it matters: The youngest workers are typically on the bleeding edge -- first to adopt new technology and a leading indicator of where it's headed next. Catch up quick: Last year, the same survey conducted by Google Workspace, along with Harris Poll, found that 93% of full-time Gen Z workers and 79% of millennials were using two or more AI tools per week. Where it stands: But life comes at you fast. AI adoption moves at breakneck speed. The novelty's worn off. By the numbers: 92% of young leaders say they want AI with personalization -- tailored to their writing style or that of their organization. * They also want easy integration with relevant personal information that can help them pull work together, like from emails, planning docs and meeting notes. * 90% said they would be more inclined or much more inclined to use AI at work if it was more personalized. "People's bars are higher now in terms of their expectations," Yulie Kwon Kim, vice president of product at Google Workspace, told Axios this week. * Last year, if AI could generate an email or doc for you, it was fun. "But now if you really want to use it in your work, that's not enough." How they did it: In September, Google fielded its second "Young Leaders" survey of 1,007 U.S.-based knowledge workers, age 22-39, who currently have or aspire to hold a leadership position at work. Zoom out: Most respondents appear to be power users. 77% said they considered themselves someone who "actively designs or engineers parts" of their workflow with AI. * And 93% agreed that AI has made them more confident in their skills as a professional. Between the lines: It makes sense that workers would prefer their AI to be more personalized. People don't want the things they write to sound generic, or like a bot wrote it. * Younger folks, for whom AI is more native, are on the lookout for content that feels phony, Kim says. * "It's still very important that things feel authentic." Reality check: Personalization sounds simple, but it's technically messy. * True style-matching requires long-term memory and access to sensitive work data, things most enterprise AI systems aren't ready to handle at scale. What to watch: Most AI in the market isn't that good at this yet. That's an opportunity for AI companies.

Google VP says the AI revolution is just a matter of time: 'The younger generation is really feeling like it's a native part of how they work' | Fortune

The future of professional technology is not just about adopting artificial intelligence (AI); it is about learning how to use it -- even embrace it -- as not just something to turn to for special purposes but fundamental to all work, according to Yulie Kwon Kim, vice president of product at Google Workspace. Speaking to Fortune from the tech giant's New York City office, Kim highlighted the findings from Workspace's second edition of the Google Workspace Study. She highlighted that workers aged 22 through 39 are not treating AI as a temporary experiment -- but rather an integral element of their career growth and daily operations. "I think it's really fascinating," Kim told Fortune, "because unlike older generations, where AI might be more of a utility in their life," the survey shows "the younger generation is really feeling like it's a native part of how they work." A mother of two, Kim said AI use as revealed in the survey is like watching young kids use iPads. "You didn't have to teach a kid how to scroll, right?" She cited the survey, conducted for Google by the Harris Poll, canvassing more than 1,000 U.S.-based knowledge workers, as well as her conversations with both Fortune 500 companies and a worldwide network of start-ups. There's just a clear generational split, she said. "A lot of the Gen Zers are really using it in ways that are very native." This observation is compelling because, historically, the younger generation has often dictated the trajectory of workplace technology, bringing products they grew up with in school or their personal life into their organizations. "Especially with AI, I've been also very curious to see how younger workers are using AI, because that kind of tells you where the future is going," Kim said. On the flipside of this question, the older, likely more vulnerable employees who are exposed to disruption by AI, Kim agreed this was part of the equation. "There's going to be cohorts of people where they just pick it up and it just feels natural. And then there's people who are very ... Change is hard sometimes." Kim used the example of when Google Docs first arrived, and white-collar workers didn't have to wait for a file to be emailed back and forth with revisions, but could be worked on by people, together, in real time. "You can imagine how not having a separate literal version of a document might be a little bit unsettling to people who are very, very used to years and years of being able to lay it out," she said. For the younger generation, she added, "it seems almost unfathomable that you'd have to wait for someone to be able to give you feedback or take a look at something very, very quickly." While the previous year was marked by experimentation for many large enterprises, Gen Z is "already there," figuring out how to become more productive and effective on their own. She offered the example of "vibe coding," or using AI tools to code without maybe having much coding training or expertise. "It's much more about what is the outcome that I want to create? And what is it that I want to create?" Kim said. "And using AI to partner and collaborate with you to build those things." This was the major theme that jumped out to Kim, as she highlighted 90% of rising leaders want "personalization" with their AI. Younger workers are already using AI to personalize their workflows, she said, and the AI tools (and companies) that will thrive will feed into that personalization. Young leaders are "beyond the point of generic output," Kim said, and 92% of respondents said it's essential for AI to deliver truly personalized assistance. For AI to be truly useful, the "quality bar" must be higher than mere novelty, requiring output that conveys the user's specific voice, tone, and writing style. This demand for authenticity comes despite -- or perhaps because of -- a generation that maintains a high level of skepticism, quickly identifying when content, such as a photo or an article, might be AI-generated. Kim said her own teenage kids are "very skeptical" when they see photos on social media. "They're like, 'Was that an AI image?'" She said her kids -- and she assumes the younger generations -- have "that radar" where it's very important for things to feel "authentic and real." The best AI tools in the future, according to Kim, will be the ones that seamlessly reflect their users. AI helps workers focus on ideas by handling "all the time-consuming stuff" like "spell-checky, grammar-checky" functions. This empowerment means traditional barriers, such as a lack of coding skills or graphic design skills, are no longer major obstacles to taking an idea from thought to reality. One leader noted after introducing Gemini to their teams, they began producing the "highest quality work he's seen." Google Workspace, which serves over 3 billion users across more than 11 million paid organizations globally, aims to meet users in this new reality. The strategic goal is to ensure AI does not feel like a "bolt-on to your life," Kim said, but rather something that is seamlessly available within everyday tools like Gmail and Google Docs. This native integration has already yielded powerful results for a wide spectrum of users, including non-native English speakers who now use AI in Gmail to write professional emails quickly, boosting their communication confidence. Kim described the privilege -- and the pressure -- of representing Google Workspace across the entire world. For instance, she said she regularly meets with Fortune 500 companies that use Workspace, but also smaller business in locations as far afield as Brazil and India. "Just hearing from users around the world, it's been amazing," she said, highlighting how much AI has helped people who are not native English speakers write professional emails in English. "It saves time, but it also makes them confident about communication." Similarly, Kim said other customers have told her AI has cut down on the time they've needed to wait for their American colleagues to simply review copy before they could publish to their website. Since she represents digital tools that encompass half the world, the scale of Kim's task is considerable. When asked about the massive change that AI represents, and whether she sees part of her role as change management for 3 billion people, Kim paused, and nodded. "Sometimes, sometimes? Because I think that the thing is when you have that wide of a spectrum of users, you have all ages, different countries ... it's a privilege, and it's a big challenge, to serve all those audiences, but it's fun."

Google Just Shared How the Next Generation of Leaders Are Really Using AI

A new survey from Google and The Harris Poll found that the vast majority of rising young professionals are using AI as an integral part of their workflow, and say the technology makes them feel more confident on the job. The survey also found that young leaders are overwhelmingly in favor of personalized AI content, a topic Google Workspace VP of product Yulie Kwon Kim is especially interested in. By personalized content, Kim is referring to AI-generated content that's been customized specifically for an individual person. The survey polled 1,007 people aged 22-39, all of whom are "employed or self-employed full time, hold or aspire to hold a leadership position, and are knowledge workers." Kim says this cohort of "young leaders" is "ahead of the curve in terms of adoption, appreciation, and really trying to figure out how do I leverage [AI] for my job and for myself." The data bears this out. Ninety-three percent of respondents said that they believe using AI at work has made them more confident in their skills and abilities; 91 percent said that AI helps them contribute at a higher level than their role typically requires; and 77 percent said that they are actively designing and engineering parts of their workflow using AI. But while young people are making great use of AI, there's still a disconnect. Kim says that authenticity is highly important to these young leaders, and content generated by AI can too often feel impersonal. That's also supported by the survey, which found that 92 percent of respondents want AI-generated responses to be personalized to their style, preferences, and workflow. Ninety percent said they'd be more inclined to use AI at work if the responses were more customized. This desire for more personalized content is now manifesting in Google Workspace's uber-popular suite of products, including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. "It's a huge opportunity for us," says Kim, adding that the content in users' Google Drives is already helping to personalize responses from Gemini, Google's AI assistant. As an example, Kim points to a moment from Google's I/O conference this past May, in which CEO Sundar Pichai used Gemini on Gmail to give a friend advice for an upcoming road trip. Gemini was able to search through Pichai's Google apps, find his itinerary from when he took the trip, recreate his writing style by analyzing his sent emails, and generate a full reply. "That's a really great picture of where we're going," says Kim, citing the "personalized smart replies" feature as an example of how Google can use additional user context to enhance Gemini's abilities. The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.