AI is the buzzword of the era, and, much like the enthusiasm of the early dot-com years, billions of dollars worth of investment is being plowed into tools for workers aimed at improving productivity and cutting employment costs. Unfortunately, a new survey of over 6,000 executives from firms across Europe and the US shows that the majority believe AI has had little impact on their business operations so far.
The survey, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (h/t Fortune), reveals the disparity between expectation and reality. While 70% of the businesses questioned were actively using AI, over 80% of them report no impact on company productivity or on employment.
That’s despite a belief among the majority of those questioned that AI will boost productivity by 1.4%, reduce headcount by 0.7%, and increase output by 0.8% over the next three years. Among the executives themselves, a third of those surveyed reported using AI in the workplace, but the usage amounted to only 1.5 hours per week on average. A quarter of those surveyed didn’t use AI at all – at least, not yet.
The contrast between the adoption of AI and its impact on business is an interesting callback to the challenges of decades past, where the introduction of the microcomputer radically changed how businesses operated. The so-called Solow’s productivity paradox, named after the economist who spotted the trend, saw that the extra admin caused by information overload created by computers actually slowed productivity among workers between the 1970s and 1980s. Productivity growth was steady at 2.9% between 1948 to 1973, but dropped to 1.1% afterwards, with improvements not seen again until the late 1990s and early 2000s. Similarly, a recent AI survey revealed that AI usage could actually increase burnout in employees.
Regardless, AI is continuing to prove to be an epoch-making disruptive technology that the executive class has firmly embraced, with AI firms capturing 61% of global venture capital investment in 2025, totalling $258.7 billion. Meanwhile, companies like Microsoft continue to go all-in on AI, with Microsoft's AI boss believing the technology can replace all white-collar jobs within 18 months.
The contradiction – and optimism – among execs proves that AI in the workplace is firmly entrenched, but only time will tell as to whether it has the positive impact that they, and the economy on the whole, will be hoping for.
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