How Americans are using AI at work, according to a new Gallup poll
[January 26, 2026] By
MATT O'BRIEN and LINLEY SANDERS
American workers adopted artificial intelligence into their work lives
at a remarkable pace over the past few years, according to a new poll.
Some 12% of employed adults say they use AI daily in their job,
according to a Gallup Workforce survey conducted this fall of more than
22,000 U.S. workers.
The survey found roughly one-quarter say they use AI at least
frequently, which is defined as at least a few times a week, and nearly
half say they use it at least a few times a year. That compares with 21%
who were using AI at least occasionally in 2023, when Gallup began
asking the question, and points to the impact of the widespread
commercial boom that ChatGPT sparked for generative AI tools that can
write emails and computer code, summarize long documents, create images
or help answer questions.
Home Depot store associate Gene Walinski is one of the employees
embracing AI at work. The 70-year-old turns to an AI assistant on his
personal phone roughly every hour on his shift so he can better answer
questions about supplies that he is not “100% familiar with” at the
store’s electrical department in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
“I think my job would suffer if I couldn’t because there would be a lot
of shrugged shoulders and ‘I don’t know’ and customers don’t want to
hear that,” Walinski said.
AI at work for many in technology, finance and education
While frequent AI use is on the rise with many employees, AI adoption
remains higher among those working in technology-related fields.
About 6 in 10 technology workers say they use AI frequently, and about 3
in 10 do so daily.
The share of Americans working in the technology sector who say they use
AI daily or regularly has grown significantly since 2023, but there are
indications that AI adoption could be starting to plateau after an
explosive increase between 2024 and 2025.
In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment
banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize
documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to
review.
Tanzi, who works for Bank of America in New York, said he also makes
uses of the bank’s internal AI chatbot, Erica, to help with
administrative tasks.
In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at
colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least
a few times a year.
Joyce Hatzidakis, 60, a high school art teacher in Riverside,
California, started experimenting with AI chatbots to help “clean up”
her communications with parents.
“I can scribble out a note and not worry about what I say and then tell
it what tone I want,” she said. “And then, when I reread it, if it’s not
quite right, I can have it edited again. I’m definitely getting less
parent complaints.”
Another Gallup Workforce survey from last year found that about 6 in 10
employees using AI are relying on chatbots or virtual assistance when
they turn to AI tools. About 4 in 10 AI users at work reported using AI
to consolidate information or data, to generate ideas or to learn new
things.
Hatzidakis started with ChatGPT and then switched to Google's Gemini
when the school district made that its official tool. She has even used
it to help with recommendation letters because “there’s only so many
ways to say a kid is really creative.”
The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption
The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI
adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will
need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of
investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computing systems.
But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or
affect employment prospects.
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Art teacher Joyce Hatzidakis poses for a portrait in her classroom
Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, Riverside, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian
Dovarganes)
 “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,” said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for
the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects
for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic
Research.
Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI
usage “usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of
skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have
higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if
you lose your job,” Manning said.
On the other hand, Manning’s research has identified some 6.1
million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to
AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and
clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and
concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state
capitals, with fewer options to shift careers.
“If their skills are automated, they have less transferable skills
to other jobs and they have a lower savings, if any savings,”
Manning said. ”An income shock could be much more harmful or
difficult to manage.”
Few workers are concerned about AI replacing them
A separate Gallup Workforce survey from 2025 found that even as AI
use is increasing, few employees said it was “very” or “somewhat”
likely that new technology, automation, robots or AI will eliminate
their job within the next five years. Half said it was “not at all
likely,” but that has decreased from about 6 in 10 in 2023.
Not worried about losing his job is the Rev. Michael Bingham, pastor
of the Faith Community Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Florida.
A chatbot fed him “gibberish” when he asked about the medieval
theologian Anselm of Canterbury, and Bingham said he would never ask
a “soulless” machine to help write his sermons, relying instead on
“the power of God” to help guide him through ideas.
“You don’t want a machine, you want a human being, to hold your hand
if you’re dying,” Bingham said. “And you want to know that your
loved one was able to hold the hand of a loving human being who
cared for them.”
Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as
retail, health care or manufacturing.
Home Depot did not ask Walinski to use AI when he got a job at the
store last year, after a decades-long career in the car business.
But the home improvement giant also did not try to stop him and he
is “not at all worried” that AI will replace him.
“The human interface part is really what a store like mine works
on,” Walinski said. “It’s all about the people.”
—-
O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Sanders from
Washington.
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