A new economic study argues that generative AI's presence in the workplace is wide-ranging but not particularly deep, with most workers in AI-exposed roles not actually using the tools regularly. Researchers found that while genAI touches around 80% of occupations and over 40% of tasks, fewer than half of workers in most of these occupations have adopted it, suggesting earlier estimates from AI vendors overstated how embedded the technology has become in everyday work.

The paper, "What Work Does Generative AI Do?", was produced by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Vanderbilt University and Harvard, using US Real-Time Population Survey data rather than chat logs from AI firms like OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic, which the authors say inflate exposure figures through overly generic task classifications. Adoption is highest in management, finance, business and computing roles, and lowest in personal service and manual jobs; only around one in six occupations exceed 70% adoption, and no task category surpasses that threshold. As of May 2026, 45% of US working-age adults used generative AI for work purposes and 62% used it overall, with the researchers noting that prior experience with AI in one area strongly predicts adoption elsewhere.