Researchers at the Wharton School recently found that there is near-universal use of artificial intelligence among large United States-based companies.
The Oct. 13 study was conducted by Wharton lecturer Jeremy Korst and Wharton Human-AI Research center faculty co-directors Stefano Puntoni and Prasanna Tambe. It marks the fourth annual AI Adoption Report in collaboration with GBK Collective — an analytics consultancy — and surveyed about 1,400 decision-makers and employees.
“Access to powerful AI is quickly becoming ubiquitous,” Korst wrote in a press release. “The advantage comes from what an organization can do with it: redesign workflows, align leaders and employees and translate AI into measurable business outcomes.”
The report found that AI is fully embedded in the core workflows of 28% of large companies, and has significantly changed processes for 73% of them. In a 10% increase from last year, 91% of employees use AI more than weekly, and in a 16% jump, 62% use it daily.
The recent publication was the first in its series to extend the participant sample for analysis to include entry and mid-level employees — rather than being restricted to managers. This enabled the team to measure the difference between how company leadership reports AI use and what the broader workforce experiences.
All four reports provide a narrative for how AI is being adopted into organizations. Last year’s report described the third wave of AI adoption, during which the technology’s use became more regular and integrated into core operations.
In the current fourth wave, there is “no longer the question” of whether or not AI will be adopted — with 73% of managers saying that “it is substantially or fully embedded in core workflows.”
“Over four years, we have watched AI move from experimentation into everyday business operations. This year, the question changes,” Puntoni wrote in the release. “What separates the leaders is whether they are changing the business around AI enough to generate meaningful value.”
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The report defined three metric markers for successful AI adoption: proving value, transforming workflow, and organization-wide alignment when adopted.
The authors determined that only 7% of surveyed organizations were successful across all three categories — pointing to further room for growth in techniques employed.
Companies give AI agents a varied degree of autonomy — which can impact recorded levels of success.
When considering the workflow transformation marker, 25% of departments where AI only advised human work met the threshold, while 31% of those that gave AI full autonomy did the same.
The group with the lowest reported success employed what the report described as a “supervised middle” approach — where humans approve and check every action taken by AI.
When organizations implement AI techniques, there is often a resulting change in their labor forces.
Over half of all managers said that their department changed its management structure due to AI adoption, while nearly 40% recorded staff reductions and one-third noted slowed or frozen hiring practices. The report cautioned against overinterpreting these findings, saying that labor effects remain unsettled.
The Wharton Human-AI Research center covers research on the economic and societal impact of AI and its role in business transformation, in addition to focusing on the human impact of AI.
The center was launched in August 2023 and reflects a broader trend at Wharton to integrate AI into both research and curricula — most notably through the addition of “Artificial Intelligence for Business” as an undergraduate concentration and MBA major.
