Key takeaways
- A new survey from Asana observes a huge surge in “AI debt,” which is the name given to inadequate work that is produced by autonomous AI agents.
- AI debt can cause cybersecurity, economic, and morale problems for businesses.
- Businesses face growing pressure to implement AI to keep pace with competitors — but they must focus on their adoption strategies at the same time.
It’s official: there’s a new AI buzzword in town. According to a recent report from Asana, 79% of global companies expect to incur “AI debt” as a result of improper or poor use of autonomous AI tools at work.
The State of AI at Work report surveyed over 9,000 professionals from the US, UK, Australia, Germany, and Japan. It was found that many companies are failing to facilitate productive collaboration between the tools and employees, leading to a huge surge in AI debt.
Reportedly, this debt can have a damaging impact on cybersecurity, data quality, and ultimately, employee morale, with the human workforce left to pick up the pieces when AI goes wrong. It brings home the critical importance of implementing a proper strategy before investing in AI.
‘AI Debt’ Already a Thorn in Companies’ Sides
Businesses around the world are preparing for a massive surge in AI debt, a new study from Asana concludes. According to the 2025 State of AI at Work report, 79% of companies around the world expect to incur the debt as a result of poorly implemented AI practices.
The survey canvassed opinion from over 9,000 employees across the US, UK, Australia, Germany, and Japan. It was found that most companies are not adequately prepared to take advantage of the possibilities of autonomous AI agents, such as Manus, leading to an influx of debt.
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Fully autonomous agents differ from standard chatbots, such as ChatGPT, in that they can initiate actions, act independently, and recall previous work that they have created. They are not as widely used as regular chatbots, but Yahoo Finance projects the market size of autonomous agents to exceed $236 billion by 2034.
AI Debt Poses Multiple Issues for Businesses
When these agents are used incorrectly, AI debt can build up, the effects of which can be troublesome for businesses. According to Mark Hoffman, an expert at Asana’s Work Innovation Lab: “Those costs could be money costs. They could also be lost time, which relates to money. It could also be a lot of things that you have to undo, which is costly from a financial standpoint.”
Ultimately, debt can have a domino effect on cybersecurity, quality of work, and employee morale, as the existing workforce bears the brunt of mistakes made by autonomous AI agents. With 90% of software developers now using AI to go about their day-to-day operations at work, this could mean broken platforms and lost revenue, among other things.
According to research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab, so-called “workslop” — defined as AI-generated content that has no substance — is creating an extra two hours of work per week for individuals who are tasked with undoing it. This could fetch up to $9 million in lost productivity per year.
Businesses Need to Rethink AI Implementation Strategies
What the report makes clear is that businesses around the world are failing to draw up comprehensive AI adoption plans, which is creating a growing volume of debt. This is backed up by our Impact of Technology on the Workplace report, which finds that the majority of surveyed respondents (58%) cited “pressure from competitors” as the leading reason for adopting AI at work.
The evidence is quite concerning. With cybersecurity potentially at stake — and the impacts of data breaches often terminal for businesses — it’s vitally important that senior leaders pause to consider their strategies before investing in AI.
While there are valid concerns about businesses getting left behind, the potential impacts of AI debt could be much worse.
