AI Adoption Is a Mile Wide and an Inch Deep — We Are Still Early

First — 35-year-olds are millennials, not boomers. Boomers are 60 to 80. And the data is shakier than the tweet implies. A Gallup poll from January 2026 found that 51% of US workers have used AI at work — but only 12% use it daily. ChatGPT alone hit 900 million weekly active users this month. People know AI exists.

But the sentiment is right — we are still early. Almost everyone I talk to outside of tech says they've used AI. They've asked ChatGPT a question, had it rewrite an email, maybe summarized a document. They see it as useful. But that's where it stops. Very few have tried to apply it to their day-to-day as a form of automation — chaining tasks together, building workflows, letting it handle things end to end. The jump from "I asked it a question once" to "this runs part of my job now" is massive, and almost nobody has made it yet.

That's the gap. Not awareness — adoption depth. When people start integrating AI into how they actually work, not just poking at a chatbot when they're curious, that's when it changes. I work in tech and only started using it in a meaningful way in the last few months. Even among my peers — early adopters by definition — most are just now reaching that turning point.