AI has moved from novelty to necessity in the American workplace, with new data showing widespread and rapid integration across multiple professions. According to Gallup’s latest Workforce survey, conducted in the fall among more than 22,000 employed adults, 12% of respondents report using AI every day. Nearly one in four say they use it frequently – at least several times each week – and almost half engage with it at least a few times a year.
These stats mark a sharp rise from the 21% who reported any AI use just two years earlier, when Gallup first began collecting comparable data. The growth reflects the rapid commercialization of generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which popularized tools capable of writing code, summarizing lengthy reports, generating images, and automating email composition.
What once required advanced programming skills or expensive software is now accessible to nearly any employee with a browser and API access.
Adoption, however, is uneven across the economy. Technology professionals are leading the way: six in ten tech workers say they use AI frequently, and nearly a third rely on it daily (see chart below).
Gallup’s data suggest this sector’s adoption rates expanded dramatically between 2023 and 2025 but may now be stabilizing as usage becomes standard practice.
AI use also runs high in professional services and academic environments. Employees at universities, in K-12 education, and in corporate offices increasingly deploy AI to synthesize research, structure lesson plans, and streamline data analysis. For many organizations, these tools have become integral to managing the flood of information that characterizes digital work.
The federal government and industry leaders continue to promote AI adoption as an engine of productivity and innovation. Yet economists remain divided on whether this surge in AI deployment will deliver sustained productivity growth or simply shift existing labor patterns. Automation’s efficiency gains may come at the expense of job losses or fewer opportunities in nontechnical fields.
Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of recent papers with the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research, describes a growing divide between those who can adapt to AI-driven change and those at risk of displacement.
“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,” Manning told The Associated Press.
These workers – often in computer-based or analytical roles – tend to have higher levels of education, possess diverse skill sets, and maintain greater financial stability. Those factors make it easier to retrain or weather temporary income shocks. But Manning’s analysis also identified roughly 6.1 million US workers whose jobs are both heavily exposed to AI automation and less protected by transferable skills or savings.
Many of these at-risk employees work in administrative and clerical positions, a segment that is disproportionately female and concentrated in smaller metropolitan areas such as university towns and state capitals.
For these groups, the capacity to pivot into new roles is limited. “If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills to other jobs and a lower savings, if any savings,” Manning noted. “An income shock could be much more harmful or difficult to manage.”
The Gallup data suggest that while adoption may have reached saturation in some high-skilled sectors, the broader US workforce is still adjusting to the implications of AI. The tools powering this transformation are driving a quiet but profound shift in how labor is organized and valued.
Whether that shift enhances productivity or heightens inequality will depend on how employers, policymakers, and educators manage the next stage of integration.
Source – https://www.techspot.com/news/111146-workplace-ai-use-has-tripled-two-years-tech.html