Pipedrive, the easy and intelligent CRM for small and medium-sized businesses, today released a new report, “AI and humanity at work: How professionals are balancing efficiency and human connection”. The report examines how professionals across industries, employment types and age groups are navigating AI adoption and reveals a striking paradox: while AI is becoming part of everyday work for millions of people, most professionals surveyed still say it’s judgment, relationships and trust that determine whether they succeed, not technology.

The “AI and humanity at work” survey found that nearly 40% of the professionals use AI tools daily, including 23.2% of respondents who use them multiple times a day. Daily AI use climbs to 50.2% among full-time employees surveyed and to nearly 58% among students surveyed. Yet adoption is far from universal: among the survey respondents who don’t currently use AI, more than 76% of non-users say they’re unlikely to start within the next 12 months. Notably, resistance isn’t concentrated among the youngest or oldest workers surveyed. More than half of all AI resistance in the survey comes from experienced professionals aged 35 to 54, suggesting AI adoption is as much a change-management challenge as a technology one.

“AI has clearly crossed into the mainstream, but that doesn’t mean everyone is convinced,” said Joe Futty, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Pipedrive. “The next wave of growth won’t come from converting skeptics, but from people who already trust AI. The real opportunity for businesses is showing experienced professionals that AI strengthens their judgment instead of replacing it.”

Key findings from the “AI and humanity at work” survey:

  • AI is becoming a thinking partner, not just an automation tool. The most common uses of AI are research and information gathering (46.6%), writing or editing (35.1%) and brainstorming (32.4%) – far ahead of workflow automation (16.3%) and coding (10.7%). Only 5.6% of surveyed respondents believe AI should replace most human roles where possible.

  • Productivity gains are real, but not universal. 32.1% of respondents say AI makes them both better and faster at work and more than half of respondents agree it frees up time for more meaningful interactions with colleagues and customers. Still, 22.2% of respondents say AI makes them neither better nor faster, underscoring that access to AI alone doesn’t guarantee value.

  • Human judgment remains the top driver of professional success. More than half of respondents (51.1%) say their success is driven primarily by personal experience and judgment, versus just 15.1% of respondents who point to advanced AI tools. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (73%) describe building genuine human connections as very or extremely important to their professional lives.

  • People don’t want less AI, but they want it to feel more human. 44% of respondents say they never use AI for communication and prefer human-written messages and 27.5% of respondents say it bothers them to receive a message they know was AI-generated. But among the respondents who do use AI to communicate, 70% say it’s at least somewhat important that the output sounds like them, including 46% who call it essential.

  • AI-generated content still has a trust gap. Nearly 30% of respondents say AI-generated content still feels too generic or robotic, compared with just 12.1% of respondents who say it’s as good as human-written content, pointing to authenticity, not just accuracy, as AI’s next hurdle for professionals.

“The Pipedrive survey data shows that people aren’t rejecting AI-generated work, they’re rejecting anything that feels impersonal,” added Futty. “That’s a signal, not a complaint. The tools that win from here won’t be the ones that generate more content faster, but the ones that help people sound more like themselves while they do it.”

Methodology

“The AI and humanity at work” report is based on a survey of 1,000 respondents across a range of industries, employment statuses and age groups. Respondents answered quantitative questions about their perceptions of technology and human connection in the era of AI. Data was collected in the summer of 2026 via a structured online questionnaire.

To learn more about “AI and humanity at work: How professionals are balancing efficiency and human connection”, you can download the full report here.

About Pipedrive

Founded in 2010, Pipedrive is the easy, intelligent CRM loved by growing sales teams at small and medium-sized businesses. Intuitive by design, the platform gives businesses complete visibility into their sales pipeline and acts as a single, trusted source for customer and deal data. Pipedrive operates like a virtual team behind every salesperson by automating manual workflows, recommending next-best actions and keeping deals moving. Today, more than 105,000 companies across 180+ countries use Pipedrive to accelerate growth. Headquartered in New York, the company is backed by majority shareholder Vista Equity Partners alongside other leading global technology investors. Learn more at www.pipedrive.com.

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