Despite Enthusiasm, Employees Underwhelmed About AI’s Potential

Even with widespread eagerness about the potential for artificial intelligence to have a positive impact on workers’ productivity, most employees believe “they were overpromised on its potential,” according to a new report from cloud communications and IT company GoTo.

“The Pulse of Work in 2025: Trends, Truths, and the Practicality of AI”, completed in partnership with research firm Workplace Intelligence, found that 62% of workers believe there has been too much hype around AI. The report examined the findings of a survey of 2,500 global employees and IT leaders about AI use and sentiment.

Employees’ feelings about the “overhype” around AI is likely because they are not prepared for “making the most of what these tools have to offer,” according to the report. Most of the respondents (86%) admitted to not using AI tools to their full potential and not being very familiar with how they can deploy them in their daily tasks (82%).

Employees also said they estimate spending 2.6 hours per day (13 hours per week) on tasks that AI could do. This means that in the U.S. alone, businesses are potentially not taking advantage of more than $2.9 trillion annually in efficiency, according to the report.

Although many workers recognize AI’s value, they still feel underwhelmed by “the revolutionary change they were promised,” said Rich Veldran, GoTo’s CEO, in a statement.

“The solution is clear: companies must go beyond just providing access to AI by ensuring employees have both the right tools and the right education,” said Veldran in the statement, noting that in practice, this means teams should be equipped with effective training and clear guidelines.

Use and Misuse

According to the report, employees are already using AI for some tasks, just not the ones for which their managers believe they are using. Instead of using the tool as a time-saver, 54% of employees reported that they’ve used it for “sensitive tasks” or “high-stakes decision-making.”

These tasks include ones that require emotional intelligence (29%), tasks impacting safety (26%) and ethical or sensitive personnel actions (16%). When prompted if they regret using AI for these tasks, 77% of workers said they did not.

The survey also found mistrust of the tools among employees: 86% of workers said they are not confident in its accuracy and reliability, and 76% reported that AI often produces outputs that need to be revised by users.

Predictably, when it comes to who is at the forefront of AI use, smaller companies are already behind. At the smallest companies (50 employees or fewer), just 59% of workers use AI and 46% said they do not know how to use it to save time or improve their work, according to the report.

‘Proficiency Has Flatlined’

Although enterprises are investing in AI, Section Inc.—a company dedicated to AI transformation and upskilling—found that workforce proficiency “is still in neutral,” raising reservations about return on investment.

According to the report, since September 2024, employees’ general AI proficiency has “flatlined,” with only 10% of the workforce scoring as AI-proficient.

The report’s survey examined 5,013 knowledge workers across the U.S., U.K. and Canada, including individual contributors and C-suite executives, measuring workers’ knowledge, usage and skill with generative AI tools.

A key reason for the lack of proficiency in enterprise organizations is because there is a lack of “wide-spread deployment,” according to Greg Shove, Section’s CEO.

“Our research echoes what we hear from enterprise organizations: they’ve rolled out ChatGPT to leadership or a few groups and stopped there,” Shove said in a statement. “Without widespread deployment, AI vendors will start seeing churn, CEOs will get frustrated by lack of ROI and workers will be left to figure it out for themselves.”