Blog · Oct 7, 2026 · By Velocity11

AI made people faster. So why are they more worried?

Here is a strange result. People who use AI a lot say it makes them much more productive. And many of them worry about their jobs. Both can be true.

The good news first

Anthropic surveyed 81,000 users of its AI assistant. People reported large gains. The average score was 5.1 on a 1 to 7 scale, where 5 means "substantially more productive". [1] The most common gain was not speed. It was scope: doing things they could not do before. 48% of people who mentioned productivity said that, and 40% said speed. [1]

Some examples from the survey: a delivery driver using AI to start an online shop, and a non-technical person who now builds apps. [1]

Fair warning from the researchers: these are active users who agreed to take a survey, so the benefits may look bigger than average. [1] Also, the scores were estimated by an AI classifier reading the answers.

Now the worry

About one in five respondents voiced concern about losing work to AI. [1] People in jobs where AI is used more (like software) worried more. [1] For most people, the more AI sped up their work, the more they worried. The logic: if your tasks take half the time, someone may ask whether your role will stay the same. [1]

It was not only the fast ones. People whose work got slower, such as some artists and writers who found AI too rigid, also worried more. [1]

Who gets the gain?

Of the people who said who benefits, most said themselves: faster tasks, new skills, free time. But 10% said their employers or clients were asking for more work in the same time. [1] Early-career people were less likely to say they personally benefited: 60%, versus 80% of senior people. [1]

What to do with that

  1. If AI saves you time, decide in advance what you will use that time for. Learning, a side project, rest. Otherwise it gets filled with more tasks.
  2. Track what you do better with AI. It is useful when you need to explain your value.
  3. Use scope, not only speed. Doing new things was the most common gain people reported.

Has AI made your work faster, slower or just different? Tell us on Instagram @velocity11ai.

Source

[1] Anthropic, "What 81,000 people told us about AI economics", Apr 22, 2026. anthropic.com

This post was written with AI help and reviewed by a person.