HBR's 12,637-case study: a quarter of top AI uses now involve outsourcing your thinking
luisdans · x · 2026-09-04
Harvard Business Review publishes the third edition of Marc Zao-Sanders' annual study analyzing 12,637 real-world AI use cases.
- ChatGPT has hit 900M regular users and Gemini 750M+; OpenAI's latest round valued it at $852B
- At least a quarter of top uses involve asking AI to do part of the user's thinking: relationship advice, decision-making, drafting emails, generating ideas
- The author warns AI's lavish praise on any prompt can create a false sense of intellectual rigor, letting people hand over thinking unnoticed
- Used as an intellectual foil—challenging assumptions, offering counterarguments—AI can actually sharpen thinking
The piece asks which use cases help or hurt leaders' expertise, and where organizations still need human intelligence.
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