Burnout Is Pushing Workers to Use AI—Even if Their Boss Doesn’t Know
White-collar workers are so overwhelmed with emails, web chats, and meetings that they are using AI tools to get their jobs done—even if their companies haven’t trained them to do so, according to a work trend index published Wednesday by Microsoft and LinkedIn.
Seventy-five percent of people in desk jobs are already using AI at work, and the amount of people using AI has nearly doubled over the past six months, the report found. The vast majority of workers using AI—regardless of whether they are baby boomers or Gen Z—are “bringing their own AI tools” rather than waiting for their companies to guide them.
“People are overwhelmed with digital debt and under duress at work,” Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft’s chatbot Copilot and cofounder of WorkLab, said in a video announcing the report’s results. “And they are turning to AI for relief.” Microsoft (which also owns LinkedIn) stands to win from the adoption of AI, and is already cashing in on its generative AI tools.
The new report is built on a survey of 31,000 people who work desk jobs across 31 countries, labor and hiring trends found in LinkedIn data, data from Microsoft 365, and research from Fortune 500 companies. It’s a look at how generative AI has affected the workplace since tools like ChatGPT became available in late 2022. While the rapid adoption of AI struck fears that it would replace jobs, the report paints a different picture: of overburdened workers seeking their own solutions, and of managers eager to hire people who have skills utilizing AI—even as companies themselves are lagging in training workers how to use it.
