Artificial intelligence may dominate the conversation in boardrooms and break rooms alike—but a new Google report suggests most workers still haven’t adopted the technology en masse.
In a study conducted with Ipsos and shared exclusively with Fortune, Google found that just two in five U.S. workers (40%) are even casually using AI on the job. Only 5% are considered “AI fluent,” meaning they’ve redesigned or reorganized significant portions of their work with the technology.
That gap appears to have real career implications. Workers who are AI fluent are 4.5 times as likely to report higher wages and four times as likely to report a promotion attributed to their ability to use AI, as compared with workers who are still in the early stages of using the technology.
But among those not using AI at work, the top barrier was relevance: 53% said they don’t think AI applies to what they do. Adoption also lags among small businesses, rural workers, and frontline employees—groups that could face the steepest climb as AI-driven productivity baselines rise.
While fears of immediate, widespread job replacement have cooled in recent months, Google’s data points to the possibility of workers being left behind if they are not properly trained. Just 14% of workers have been offered AI training by their employer in the past 12 months, and only 37% say that their organization provides guidance on AI use at work.
