Tech giants are betting big on artificial intelligence, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its development, promising it will revolutionize the workplace. However, a new survey suggests that the reality on the ground is quite different: most American workers aren’t yet using these tools.
A recent Pew Research Center survey, published Tuesday, found that approximately 81% of US workers are classified as “non-AI users.” While about one in six workers reported using AI for at least some of their job tasks, the majority either rarely or never use AI, or hadn’t even heard of AI use in the workplace.
The research, which surveyed 5,273 employed US adults in October, highlights a significant gap between the hype surrounding AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, and their actual adoption in the workforce. This suggests that the massive investments by tech companies may still have a considerable selling job ahead of them before seeing a return.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are collectively planning to spend over $320 billion on AI-related capital expenditures in 2025. Their investment strategy is predicated on the expectation that business demand for AI tools will continue its growth, necessitating more chips and data centers to power these services.
Google has integrated AI tools like Gemini Advanced and NotebookLM into its Workspace enterprise plans, making AI a central part of its business strategy. The company announced in January that over 100,000 customers had already adopted Google’s AI tools.
Microsoft is also making a significant push with its Copilot AI assistant. However, Copilot has faced some hurdles. Business Insider reported last year that reviews of Copilot — both internal and external—suggest the new product is falling short of expectations.
The AI boom was ignited in late 2022 by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot which quickly garnered attention from both businesses and consumers.. Despite this initial excitement, the Pew Research Center survey found that only about one in ten workers use AI chatbots on a daily or several-times-a-week basis in their jobs.
Doug Winter, CEO and founder of Seismic, a sales software company, suggests that a lack of integration strategy among businesses might be contributing to the relatively slow adoption of AI tools. “There’s a constant stream of new AI tools promising to revolutionize the workplace,” Winter told Business Insider. “Many businesses rush to adopt them without clear integration strategies. This applies pressure on employees to quickly adapt and utilize multiple new technologies, often leading to tool fatigue.”
Beyond adoption rates, the Pew survey also gauged employee sentiment about the future. More than half (52%) of the respondents expressed greater worry than hope regarding the long-term impact of AI on the job market.
