The Everyday

One in five US workers now hands tasks to AI, not colleagues

Editorial

Editorial

— 2 min read
Share
One in five US workers now hands tasks to AI, not colleagues

A new representative survey from Epoch AI and polling firm Ipsos quantifies how far AI has crept into everyday work: one in five employed Americans now hands at least one task to a machine that used to go to a person.

One in five employed US adults now delegates at least one work task to AI that previously went to a coworker or outside contractor, according to a survey of 1,106 workers by Epoch AI and Ipsos. The poll, fielded July 10–19, asked about ten common knowledge-work tasks drawn from US Department of Labor data and found AI in use across all of them — with wide variation. Adoption runs highest in computer systems and software development, where 57 percent of people doing that work use AI, followed by data analysis at 46 percent and reading work documents at 39 percent; record-keeping trails at 25 percent.

Most usage is partial support rather than takeover. Only in software development does full or near-full AI completion reach 10 percent of tasks; everywhere else it stays below 7 percent. The clearest human-to-machine shift shows up in data analysis, where 7.1 percent of respondents say AI has taken over work people used to handle, with document reading (5.7 percent) and record-keeping (5.3 percent) close behind. Epoch AI stresses that substitution does not automatically mean displacement: workers are shifting tasks, not losing jobs wholesale.

The time-saving story is messier than the headline. When AI handles only part of a task, workers report saving time 37 percent of the time; when it does most or all of the work, that rises to 53 percent. But roughly one in six AI-assisted tasks now takes longer than before — possibly because prompting eats time, or because workers use the slack to do things more thoroughly. Trust in the output is high either way: 66 percent of AI-generated work is used unchanged or with only light edits, though just 6 percent ships with zero changes.

Epoch AI's own summary is the most useful line in the study: AI is a "versatile but usually not self-sufficient workplace tool." The data points to a redistribution of tasks between humans and machines rather than the full automation of jobs — a picture consistent with earlier readings. Gallup found 45 percent of US workers using AI on the job last August (though only 10 percent daily), and an Anthropic survey of Claude users found half believed AI could already handle 50 percent or more of their work. The Epoch numbers are the first representative, task-level look at how that usage actually substitutes for human hands.

What to watch: whether the one-in-six slower-task finding widens as workers offload more to agents — and whether "delegating to AI" starts showing up in job descriptions as a required skill.

Does handing a task to AI instead of a colleague change what collaboration means at your workplace? Tell us in the comments.

Read more

AI 101 — How do AI video generators work?

AI 101 — How do AI video generators work?

An AI video generator is a model that starts with a grid of random noise and repeatedly refines it into a moving picture that matches your prompt — the same trick image generators use, stretched across time. Nothing is filmed, and nothing is stitched together from clips the model has seen. The pixels in the finished video were invented, frame by frame, all at once. Why it matters right now Kling 4.0, Kuaishou's flagship video model, went fully live on October 15 with up to 30 seconds of vid

Houmo moves compute inside memory — and A20 enters production

Houmo moves compute inside memory — and A20 enters production

Beijing chipmaker Houmo used its partner conference this week to lay out two compute-in-memory routes at once — and to say the first chip built on the newer one is already in production. Houmo's A20, its first chip built on a 3D compute-in-memory architecture, has entered production. The part supports up to 16 chips fully interconnected, claims a 50% improvement in compute utilization over the previous generation, and covers models from 3B to 30B parameters, according to co-founder and product

Kling 4.0 goes live with 30-second native video at 10-bit HDR

Kling 4.0 goes live with 30-second native video at 10-bit HDR

Kuaishou's Kling AI has spent two years becoming the video model people actually finish projects with. Its new flagship, Kling 4.0, went fully live on October 15 — and this round is less about prettier frames than about the two things that make a generated shot usable in a real edit: length and control. Kling 4.0 generates up to 30 seconds in a single native pass, outputs 10-bit HDR at 4K, 1080p and 21:9, and takes up to 15 reference assets in one task. That budget splits across ten images, fi

Brain organoids classified Braille at 83% — in a trio, not alone

Brain organoids classified Braille at 83% — in a trio, not alone

Two stories today: human brain tissue on a chip decoded a tactile signal, and the data-centre company behind some of the largest AI contracts in Europe turns out to be six months behind on its flagship site. Human forebrain organoids grown on a microelectrode array classified Braille letters with 61 percent accuracy on their own and 83 percent when the responses of three organoids were combined, in a peer-reviewed study from the University of Bristol. The team took event-based tactile readings