69% of workers hide their AI use. Now what?
The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI Ready CMO
Quick thought experiment: how many people on your team are secretly using Claude or ChatGPT right now? According to Anthropic’s new study of 1,250 professionals, the answer is probably “most of them.”
They’re just not telling you.
The main reason, believe it or not, is shame. 69% of workers say there’s social stigma around using AI at work. One fact-checker in the study put it perfectly: “A colleague recently said they hate AI and I just said nothing. I don’t tell anyone my process because I know how a lot of people feel about AI.”
This is the reality in most organizations right now. People are quietly getting a 2-3x productivity boost while publicly pretending they’re still doing things the old way. If you don’t have clear AI policies and guidelines, that shadow usage is happening with your proprietary data, your customer information, and your competitive intelligence.
This points to a bigger leadership problem. If 69% of your team feels stigma about AI use, that’s not a them problem—it’…