This blog post is a repost from Greg & Taylor's newsletter, Personal Math.

Greg and I use AI nearly every day as a thought partner – personally and professionally. We use it to pressure test strategic decisions, get feedback on plans, or get a roadmap for something we’ve never done before. And we’ve become AI evangelists to friends, family, and colleagues.

But in talking to others and teaching over 7,000 students our AI courses, we’ve realized that AI adoption faces a challenge that no one’s talking about: the intangible feeling that using AI feels like cheating.

In most jobs, value is defined in one of two ways – coming up with great ideas or expending effort to accomplish a lot of work. People who come up with novel ideas or complete a lot of tasks are seen as more valuable. Using AI challenges these two principles – if you’re using AI well, you’re likely working less and not coming up with all your great ideas – AI is.

There are other challenges slowing down AI adoption (knowing how to prompt, remembering to use it, etc.). But those are similar to the challenges any new productivity tool has faced. This challenge (the feeling of cheating) is different – because it calls into question our perception of professional value and self-worth.

So this week, we’re unpacking why you may not be using AI as much as you should be, and what you can do about it.

– Taylor

The obvious challenges to AI adoption

Last year, AI adoption accelerated, from 20% of global desk workers using AI in September 2023 to 32% of global desk workers using AI in March 2024. But since then, adoption has slowed. In the past five months, global adoption grew just four percentage points from 32% to 36%. It was even slower in the US, growing only one percentage point from 32% to 33% of desk workers.

ChatGPT was released 24 months ago, so AI is still relatively new. And like any productivity tool, there are a few tactical and more obvious challenges holding adoption back.

1. You have to be good at prompting. Shitty prompts create shitty output. But most people aren’t good prompters yet. At Section, we run a bi-annual AI proficiency report that measures AI usage, knowledge, and prompting. In our most recent study of 5,000 knowledge workers, just 10% of people were strong prompters. So the other 90% of the workforce doesn’t get strong output when they use AI. And if you’re not getting good output, you probably don’t believe the tech is worth your time.
   
   
2. You have to know when to use it. AI is a swiss army knife – it can be applied to thousands of problems or scenarios. But the UI itself is a blank page – an open conversation prompt that requires the user to decide how to apply it. Therefore, to increase adoption, people need to be taught / shown the use cases that make sense based on their role.

3. You have to remember to use it. Unlike Google, Slack, and email, AI platforms aren’t engrained in our flow of work. Even power users still have to remember to use AI. Greg (who teaches two AI courses and speaks about AI everyday) still keeps a post-it note on his monitor that reminds him to “ask AI”.

These are real, significant but tactical challenges to AI adoption. They’re also more similar to the challenges facing any new productivity tool – we need to learn how to use the technology and remember to use it.

But for most of us, learning how to use AI will not be enough. We need to reset our beliefs about how we create value at work.

The non-obvious challenges to AI adoption

I remember the first time I realized that my reaction to AI was different from my reaction to other technology. I asked Claude to help me figure out how to re-package our product for three enterprise buyers, and the options it gave me were good – really good, maybe better than what I would have come up with.

I was impressed, but also freaked out. In hindsight, I was subconsciously thinking – this is what I’m really good at; it’s why Section (and Greg) value me so much. If AI can do this, what’s my role?

If you’ve used AI more than a few times, you might have had this moment. If you’ve figured out how to prompt it well, you’ve definitely had a version of this moment. It’s a mixture of awe, fear, and anxiety. And it’s tied to two beliefs most of us hold about what makes us valuable at work.

Belief #1: The value of original ideas

From a young age we’re taught: don’t plagiarize, it’s cheating. In addition, we put a premium on great original ideas, especially in many business functions such as strategy, content marketing, and product development. In this context, using AI feels like cheating – you got “someone” else (AI) to do the work for you rather than you creating the idea or output yourself.

Belief #2: The value of effort

Many workers equate their value to effort – I worked hard to accomplish a lot of tasks, therefore I’m valuable to the company. It’s why we often talk about the amount of work on our plates, how long we spent on something, or how hard we worked to figure out a problem or accomplish a task.

Using AI to condense a 4-hour problem into 30 minutes also feels like cheating – or worse, like you’re no longer as valuable because there’s not as much work for you to do. Last week, Slack published a report that highlighted these two barriers to AI adoption. In a study of more than 17,000 global desk workers, nearly half (48%) said they would feel uncomfortable admitting to their manager that they used AI.

The top reason (cited by 47% of those workers) was that using AI feels like cheating. The second and third most common reasons (cited by 46%) were a fear of being seen as less competent or lazy by their manager.

The first is directly tied to a perception that original ideas are more valuable. The second two directly reflect the idea that value is tied to effort or amount of work accomplished. If AI is doing my work and my thinking, what’s making me valuable?

How to make this mindset shift

Ultimately, using AI can make us feel replaceable. This is a meaningful barrier, since so many workers (particularly young people) tie their self-worth to work. 70% of US college grads say they get their sense of identity from their job.

This experience is normal – most of today’s AI power users experienced some version of these feelings the first time AI gave them a really valuable output. It’s normal to wonder “if AI does what I’m so great at, what does that mean for me?”

But AI is coming into our companies whether we like it or not. And leaders are all in on AI. The same Slack study found that 99% of leaders say they will invest in AI this year, and 97% feel urgency to incorporate AI into their business operations.

So here’s our advice on how you can get over these mental hurdles.

1. Realize that CEOs don’t tie (as much) value to effort and the origin of ideas

CEOs care about output and results, not the amount of time a project took or where the idea came from. This has always been the case. Now with AI, good CEOs will expect projects to take less time and teams to come up with better ideas. They don’t have all the same emotional hang ups about the work that you might.

2. Start with something you have no expertise in

In our experience, these emotional hang ups emerge when you see AI do something that you view as a personal differentiator, or a way that you have an edge. But these hang ups aren’t as common if you’re using AI to help you with something you have no expertise in.

If you’re a doctor, using AI to help you read MRI test results is going to stir up lots of emotions – concern over your value as a doctor, nitpicking the 5% of AI’s answer that’s not entirely accurate, etc. But Greg and I aren’t doctors. So when we’ve both used AI to help us understand medical test results before (or even after) a doctor has explained them, we’ve been blown away.

So start by using AI as your thought partner for something you don’t see as your secret sauce. Use it to build you an investing plan if you’re not a financial advisor. Have it explain a newly recommended meditation practice you’ve never done before (a real example from Greg). Have it help you crunch numbers for a report you’re nervous to present or prepare for a tough conversation with a vendor whose contract isn’t getting renewed in 2025.

This helps you see AI’s value without bringing all your emotional baggage to the table.

3. Know you’ll soon be competing with an AI-native generation

AI adoption is already highest among adults ages 18-24, partly because AI is more native to their workflows, and partly because they don’t have as many of these hang ups. This AI-native generation is already entering the workforce ready to use AI – and this is who you’ll be working and competing with for the next 10-30 years of your career. So think of AI as an edge against this AI-native generation, rather than something to be ashamed of.

Our advice

This mindset around work ethic and original ideas is natural – it’s been engrained in us from childhood. The first step is to catch the feeling in yourself and reframe it.

Here’s the reframe: Above you, your CEO wants your business leveraging AI and doesn’t care how that advantage is generated. And below you, an AI-native generation is coming without any of these emotional hang ups.

So let’s all agree right now: using AI is not cheating.

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