Are your co-workers hiding their AI skills from you to protect their edge? New report claims your colleagues could be secret AI whizzkids, but you'd never know

• 38% of workers who regularly use AI have admitted to “hoarding” prompts to gain a professional advantage
• Meanwhile, 21% have hidden their AI use from their manager in order to appear more efficient
• Many just don’t want their colleagues to gain the same advantage to productivity

New research has claimed nearly two-thirds (62%) of workers using AI regularly believe having better AI skills gives them an edge – and 38% are keeping productive prompts to themselves to to gain a professional advantage.

A Use.AI survey of employees with regular AI users in the workplace found that of this number, nearly half (44%) didn’t want their colleagues to gain the same advantage to productivity, while 31% claimed that it was they who had invested the time and effort into developing the prompt and didn’t want to give away their advantage.

While the use of AI for productivity boosts can unlock advantages, the survey indicates a proprietary attitude, with workplace “gatekeepers” potentially hoarding the best AI prompts.

AI teamwork?

A trend of gaining an advantage in the workplace through developing AI skills seems to be the takeaway from this survey, which quizzed 13,276 adults who use AI in the workplace, based in organizations in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, the EU, and Latin America.

As well as unearthing a habit of keeping AI productivity shortcuts a secret, the survey also underpins a growing pattern of anxiety around the technology’s impact on a worker’s performance. It found that 41% of AI users in the workplace were worried about colleagues and managers finding out how much time and effort the technology was saving them. They were also concerned that they would be expected to achieve the same levels of productivity and speed in future.

It also found that 36% had hidden their AI use from coworkers, with 21% hiding their new-found productivity skills from their manager.

AI-generated tensions

Many criticisms of AI at the point of use (as opposed to data centers) tends to dwell on the issues surrounding generative AI and its impact on creative industries. In a non-creative industry, there is the reliability of the results to consider – but Use.AI’s survey seems to point at a new issue.

Ihor Herasymov is a Co-Founder & CEO of Use.AI, and says that the survey suggests “tension” is developing in the workplace around AI.

“When a useful AI method becomes part of someone’s personal edge, sharing it is no longer a neutral act. Companies may need to think more carefully about how they reward people who turn private know-how into shared capability, because employees will notice quickly when openness helps the organization while weakening their own position.”

In short, the companies that find this secretive AI prompt culture developing may find that the metrics with which judge employee performance will have to change.