November 26, 2025
Soaring or snoring?
Investors expect AI use to soar. That's not happening
Investors want AI to take off—commenters say it’s still taxiing
TLDR: A new survey finds only 11% of workers used AI recently, with big firms cooling off. Commenters clash: skeptics say hype outruns real results, while others argue usage and spending are rising fast, pointing to charts and capacity crunches—proof the AI story is far from settled.
A fresh U.S. Census Bureau survey says only 11% of workers used AI at work in the last two weeks, and big companies are actually using it less. Translation: despite three years of “robot assistants for everyone,” the vibes are not matching the spreadsheets. The article set off a comment-section cage match. The skeptics came in hot: one viewer of a Google interview with Ilya says even the pros admit lab tests (“evals”) don’t match real life, and the Gemini 3 hype train had people rolling their eyes. Their mood: investors want fireworks, but they’re getting sparklers.
Then the counterpunch: another commenter insists AI use is absolutely soaring, pointing to charts showing automation up 3×, 40% of companies paying for generative AI (the text-making kind), and 10% of workers using it daily. Plus, if OpenAI and Anthropic keep running out of server space, doesn’t that scream demand? The long-view crowd chimed in with “this will take decades,” while the meme squad dropped: “the hype curve doesn’t always go up.” Somewhere in the chaos, a DIY hero posted a browser-spoof workaround to dodge the paywall—because of course they did.
So is AI soaring or snoring? The comments say both—and they’re fighting it out with receipts, eye-rolls, and popcorn-worthy charts.
Key Points
- •A U.S. Census Bureau business survey asks firms about AI use in producing goods and services over the prior two weeks.
- •The employment-weighted share of Americans using AI at work fell by about one percentage point to 11%.
- •Adoption has declined sharply among the largest businesses (over 250 employees).
- •The data imply that, three years into the generative-AI wave, workplace demand is weaker than expected.
- •The findings challenge investor expectations that AI adoption is rapidly soaring.