More American workers are experimenting artificial intelligence in their jobs, but doubts remain widespread.
new Gallup polls He finds that although more employees are using AI more frequently in their work, there has been Slight increase in alert That new technologies will replace their jobs. Many workers who do not use AI say they would prefer to work without it, have moral opposition to the technology or are concerned about data privacy.
The survey, conducted in February, indicates a difference in how AI works Reshaping the American Workplace. Some see it as a game-changer for productivity and efficiency, while others are concerned about its potential negative effects.
Social worker Scott Segal said he regularly uses artificial intelligence to find information that will help connect his elderly and frail patients to health care resources in Northern Virginia. While he knows that human connection and the care they bring to this work is important, he also believes that artificial intelligence could soon replace it.
“I plan ahead,” said Segal, 53. “I think everyone who works in a fungible field or trade should plan ahead.”
Nearly 3 in 10 employees use AI frequently in their jobs, meaning they use it daily or several times a week. About 2 in 10 users are infrequent, and use AI tools at work a few times a month or a few times a year.
The Gallup poll found that about 4 in 10 workers say their organization has done this Certified AI tools or technology To improve organizational practices. About two-thirds of these workers say that AI has had a “very” or “somewhat” positive impact on their individual productivity and work efficiency.
Workers who use AI in management roles are more likely to say that the technology has been at least “somewhat” positive for their productivity, compared to individual contributors. About 7 in 10 leaders who use AI at least several times a year say AI has made them more efficient at work, compared to just over half of individual contributors.
Labor and employment attorney Elizabeth Bloch of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said she uses ChatGPT to help “craft letters or emails in a diplomatic way because it’s a very adversarial and sometimes angry profession.”
AI tools appear to have greater benefit for workers in administrative, healthcare, and technology roles than in service jobs. About 6 in 10 employees in those fields who use AI say it has boosted their productivity at least “somewhat,” compared with 45% of those who use it in service jobs.
Even when companies provide AI tools, there is no guarantee that employees will adopt them. About half of American employees use artificial intelligence only once a year or not at all, according to a Gallup study.
Bloch said she tried using artificial intelligence in legal research, but found that it was susceptible to hallucinations, or fabricating false information, even when using AI tools specifically designed for legal work. She worries that other lawyers who were already bad at finding and citing relevant case law “will be bad at using AI, because you’re not using the right prompts,” prompting judges to sanction them. For false quotes.
Among employees who have AI tools in their company but are not using them, 46% say it’s because they prefer to continue doing their work the way they do it now. About 4 in 10 non-AI users report that they are ethically opposed to AI, concerned about data privacy or do not believe that AI can be useful for the work they do.
About a quarter of those non-users with AI tools available say they have used AI at work and don’t find it useful, while about 2 in 10 say they don’t feel prepared to use AI effectively.
Thuy Bisson, a contracts manager at a company that works with the federal government in Maryland, said she uses AI weekly for mundane tasks, but shuns it to do things it can already do well.
“I’ve heard from colleagues that we can use AI to put together our own PowerPoint slides,” Bisson said. “I’m a little biased about this. Well, I can put my PowerPoints together. I don’t need help because it took me time to hone my skill.”
While this was not a reason to abandon AI at work, the survey also found that American workers are increasingly concerned about being fired from their jobs by new technologies.
About 2 in 10 — 18% — of U.S. workers say it is “very” or “somewhat” likely that their current jobs will be eliminated within the next five years due to new technology, automation, robotics, or artificial intelligence. That’s up from 15% in 2025. People who work at companies that have adopted AI are more likely to worry about their jobs being cut: 23% describe this as at least “somewhat” likely in the next few years.
A Fox News poll in March showed that about 6 in 10 registered voters believe that artificial intelligence will eliminate more jobs than it creates over the next five years. Only about 1 in 10 expect this will create more jobs, and about a third say it is too early to say. About 7 in 10 working voters say they are “not very” or “not at all” concerned that their current jobs could be eliminated by AI.
Segal, the Virginia social worker, said his backup plan if AI replaces him is to start a new “health care companion service” that physically accompanies patients from one appointment to the next, especially when they are sedated and have no family or others to accompany them.
“I don’t think this is something that will be replaced for another 10 or 15 years, until robots are fleshed out with artificial intelligence,” Segal said. “I think AI will replace most people’s recruiting jobs, and I wonder what people will do for a living at that point.”
Meanwhile, he was asking AI chatbots to help him devise a savings strategy for his retirement.
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Gallup’s quarterly labor force surveys were conducted with a random sample of adults aged 18 or older who work full-time and part-time at establishments in the United States and are members of Gallup’s probability-based panel. The most recent survey of 23,717 employed U.S. adults was conducted February 4-19, 2026. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 0.9 percentage points.