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.