AI at work hits a milestone: 1 in 5 US workers now hand off tasks

A new Epoch survey found that 20% of employed U.S. workers now hand off at least one task to artificial intelligence, or AI, that used to go to a human coworker.

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People are trusting the output more, too. According to Epoch, nearly two-thirds of AI-assisted results get used with little or no editing. In software development and data analysis, the tools are already writing code snippets, summarizing data, and suggesting solutions.

The gains are real, but they don’t look the same for everyone. In the Epoch survey, 53% of workers said AI saves time when it handles most of a task. About one in six said the opposite: those jobs actually take longer, because someone still has to verify, correct, or reformat the results.

And that 20% figure may only show part of the picture. A March 2026 U.S. Census Bureau survey found that 55% of American workers had used AI for at least one common work activity. Other workplace studies put the number as high as 89%. Built-in tools in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace now help people schedule meetings, generate reports, search business apps, and automate admin work.

If you use workplace software a lot, this is something to keep an eye on. You can trace the numbers back to Epoch, the U.S. Census Bureau, and related workplace studies. At the same time, companies are adding AI rules, more oversight, and new roles such as prompt engineers and AI strategy specialists.