17th July, 2026

34% of people report hiding their AI use from employers

THIS ARTICLE delves into and looks beyond a national survey’s findings that 34% of employees report hiding AI usage from employers. Wait until you see which employee group is more than twice as likely as others to engage in such practices! I also look at shadow AI, and cognitive offloading.

Thirty-nine percent of people report hiding their AI use from employers. Does this statistic surprise you? As someone who’s periodically surveyed assistants about whether your employers are aware of the extent to which you use AI, and whether workplace policies or guidelines are in place, I found it interesting to read the results of a 2026 survey of thousands of Canadian businesses and employees.

The survey results, released July 6, 2026, also stated that 43% of respondents feel guilty using AI to produce work and 39% consider it cheating to use AI. It could be tempting to think it’s the older people in workplaces who feel this way, yet the survey found that sentiment “… increases noticeably among younger demographics, with 56% of Gen Z workers reporting that they feel guilty about integrating these technologies into their employment routines.”

So much for transparency, cyber awareness, and thinking no one will notice. The survey also found that 45% of Canadian businesses believe their employees use personal AI accounts at work.

“Shadow AI” is the term for such unsanctioned use of AI tools or apps without IT department oversight or approval. In such instances, employees log on to personal accounts on external platforms without benefit of the IT security systems their employers have in place.

The kicker?  According to Trusted Tech, it’s the leaders high on the org charts – senior decision-makers – who are more than twice as likely as their teams to use unapproved AI tools. Imagine being the CIO or CISO (Chief Information Security Officer), and how you’d broach that discussion with your leadership team colleagues.

Cognitive offloading: Here’s another term for you. Forbes, the American Psychological Association, the NIH/National Library of Medicine and others have been writing about potential impacts of the way we’re increasingly letting AI think for us. Those of you who’ve been in some of my recent conference presentations will remember how we used the exercise of taking a minute to write down the names of all the people whose phone numbers we can remember without the use of our smartphones as one example of just how reliant we are on such resources.

Lisa Bodell put it clearly in her Forbes article, writing, “… thinking has become optional … And while this feels like a huge leap forward, there’s a terrible cost: the erosion of critical thinking, the very skill that makes us human.”

I’.ve been writing about AI and what I used to refer to digital disruption for years now, including some interviews and articles that now seem rather prescient. I’ve bundled links to some of these pieces on the “AI – Artificial Intelligence” option you’ll see atop your screen. Have a look at my AI page if you’d like to see how far we’ve come in the space of less than a decade.