Generative AI may not be coming for your job, but it’s certainly coming to your job. Worldwide, 75% of knowledge workers now use gen AI in their work, according to a recent Microsoft/LinkedIn survey. Often it’s employees, not companies, leading the way: In most countries, and to a particularly great degree in China and the U.S., many workers regularly use gen-AI tools even though their employer isn’t providing any. Notably, while the U.S. is home to the world’s dominant platforms, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama, it lags behind middle-income countries like India, Indonesia, and Brazil in gen-AI adoption—a sign that tech-savvy younger workers could be helping emerging-market economies close the global digital divide.
This piece appears in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “In the AI workplace race, the U.S. isn’t winning.”