Microsoft Report Reveals AI's Impact on Workplace Dynamics: Efficiency Boost and Social Concerns

17% of employees who use AI at work do so to avoid co-worker judgment: But workplace connection 'is a key to finding happiness'

As AI becomes more advanced and prolific in the workplace, employees find new ways to use it to improve their performance. In Microsoft's recent 2025: The Year the Frontier Firm Is Born report, the company wanted to get a sense of how people use AI in the workplace. Among their questions for the 31,000 workers across 31 countries they surveyed was, "in the past year, which tasks have you relied more on AI for than a human colleague?" says Alexia Cambon, senior research director at Microsoft. They found workers turn to AI more often than people for help with information search, data analysis, brainstorming and creative thinking. Microsoft's follow up question was "why?" says Cambon. While many choose the tech for its 24/7 availability and its "endless stream of ideas on demand," some turn to it for more emotional reasons. Nearly a fifth, 17% of people working on the aforementioned tasks turn to AI more than a colleague for "fear of human judgment," Microsoft found. Happiness expert and TEDx speaker Jessica Weiss is not surprised that for some people, AI "starts to become a stand-in for human connection. But oftentimes and unfortunately, it's not for the better." Here's why she believes people are leaning into AI in this way and how to avoid doing it.

AI is breeding anti-social behavior in the office, according to Microsoft

Microsoft surveyed 31,000 workers in 31 countries to ask how they are adapting to working with AI. While it found more people are turning to AI for its unique capabilities, plenty of people are using it to avoid human interaction. Seventeen percent of those surveyed said they use AI out of fear of judgment and like that AI feels private. Another 16% reported using it to avoid the friction of working with a colleague. Fifteen percent cited the demands of colleagues as a reason to turn to AI, since it requires less "handholding." And 8% said they use AI so they can take all the credit for the work and avoid citing a coworker. Other more popular answers for using AI included 42% who appreciate it being available 24/7, 30% who find it does tasks faster than they can, and 28% who like the "endless stream of ideas on demand." The report comes as Microsoft announced a major expansion of its AI tools. Its 365 Copilot Wave 2 spring release featured AI "agents" designed to function as digital colleagues who can perform complex workplace tasks through deep reasoning capabilities. Microsoft has said it wants AI to serve as more than just a tool and become an integral collaborator in daily work. "A new organizational blueprint is emerging, one that blends machine intelligence with human judgment, building systems that are AI-operated but human-led," the report said. "Like the Industrial Revolution and the internet era, this transformation will take decades to reach its full promise and involve broad technological, societal, and economic change."