Is this how the AI bubble will pop?

Despite the hype, the demand for AI in the workplace seems to be drying up fast

WE’RE ALL WELL aware of the full-court press to try to get people to use AI at work, which makes this trend in census and survey data particularly interesting: over the last few months, the usage of AI at work has suddenly started to drop.

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After steadily climbing to a high of 12 per cent of businesses using AI to produce goods and services, AI adoption has stalled in official statistics, reports The Economist. “Adoption has fallen sharply at the largest businesses, those employing over 250 people,” the publication stated at the end of November, noting that adoption had fallen by a full percentage point over 2025.

Informal surveys track the same. Stanford University professor Jon Hartley found that the percentage of individual workers using AI peaked at 46 per cent in June but had fallen to 37 per cent by September. In almost every data point they were able to review, AI usage had plateaued or had fallen over the past six to eight months.

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So, what’s the deal? The Economist proposes a few explanations. One is that there is a clear enthusiasm gap between senior leaders, who love AI, and rank-and-file workers, who view it with much more skepticism. Other explanations question how useful the tech actual is.

“Changing perceptions of AI’s usefulness could be another reason for the adoption stagnation,” they wrote. “Evidence is mounting that the current generation of models is not able to transform the productivity of most firms. To the extent that existing users of AI come to believe that it has an unimpressive return, potential users may hold off on adopting it.”

The tech publication Futurism looked at the data from the opposite direction as well, reading in the data not just apathy towards adoption but a spike in rejection. More workers are comfortable telling surveyors that they don’t use AI in their work at the end of 2025 than were telling them that at the start of 2025.

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“The survey results show a steady uptick in ‘no’ results over the past few months, culminating in a dreadful 81.4 per cent as of the latest poll,” Futurism writer Joe Wilkins explained. “Though various non-government surveys…vary wildly in their numbers, they all seem to spell out the same results.”

The rate of adoption is one of the many metrics to watch as more talk of an AI bubble swirls. “Whether AI adoption is fast or slow has profound consequences,” wrote The Economist. “It is also the most important question in determining whether or not the world is in an AI bubble.” Kieran Delamont