By Preston Fore
Publication Date: 2026-02-19 14:20:00
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 4.5x more likely to report higher wages and 4x more 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…