Key Takeaways
- 70% of businesses stating that they use AI on a regular basis.
- However, businesses are not seeing meaningful gains from AI, with 80% seeing no impact on productivity or employment.
- The disconnect between AI usage and gains has been common over the last few years, with professionals waiting for revenue to catch up to investment.
AI still isn’t making as much of an impact on employment as CEOs would like, with another survey showing that as much as 90% of businesses aren’t gaining or losing jobs due to the tech.
Regardless, the business world is still betting big on the technology, with AI usage continuing to soar year-over-year, despite these suggestions that it’s not triggering aan immense surge in productivity or revenue.
In its modern form, AI has had a few years to really make an impact, but the majority of businesses are still waiting in the wings.
Large Majority of Businesses Are Keeping Their Workers
According to a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 90% of businesses state they have made no changes to their workforce as a result of AI advancements. That’s good news for workers concerned about keeping up with the artificially intelligent Joneses.
Why? Well, the technology may not be there, judging from the 89% of businesses that have seen no impact from AI in regard to the productivity of their team.
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All in all, the survey found that the effects of AI in 2026 have been pretty negligible when it comes to the job market and productivity, the two things experts say should be impacted the most.
AI Usage Continues to Rise
Despite the survey’s findings about the lackluster productivity gains of AI, it seems that isn’t slowing anyone down when it comes to actually using the technology.
In fact, according to the survey, 78% of US businesses use AI tools on a regular basis, with other countries like the UK (71%), Germany (65%), and Australia (59%) all seeing the majority of businesses getting on board with the tech.
As for which industries are using it the most, the professional and scientific industries (87%) are currently leading the pack, with finance and insurance (86%) and information and communications (85%) also using AI quite a bit.
AI vs Productivity
In the last few years, AI has become unimaginably popular because of its potential. Unfortunately, that’s all it has been so far, with the expectations far outpacing the reality of AI in 2026.
Hopes are still high, though. The survey found that most professionals believe AI will start seeing some gains, forecasting that AI will be able to “boost productivity by 1.4%, increase output by 0.8% and cut employment by 0.7%.”
It’s hard to deny that AI is having a big impact on the business world, but so far that has only been in investments. If we want to avoid all the stress about a bubble popping, we’re going to have to start to see some results.
