Gen Z believes using AI is making their colleagues dumb and lazy—but may paradoxically see it as key to their own promotion, Wharton says

Detailed summary

Nearly 80% of Gen Z believes AI is making people lazier, but the young generation has increased how much they’re using the technology, a Wharton-led survey finds.

Last year, researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University revealed startling evidence about the impact of using AI on how—and how hard—people think, finding that among more than 300 knowledge workers, leaning too much on AI tools like ChatGPT was associated with diminished critical thinking skills.

The study, mirrored by results from MIT-led research, suggested that even using AI for low-stakes tasks such as proofreading “can lead to significant negative outcomes in high-stakes contexts,” like writing legal documents, the study authors wrote.

For the young generation of digital natives navigating AI anxiety around keeping up with peers using the technology and AI displacing them from jobs, the fear of the technology making people dumber is dominant. But that hasn’t stopped them from using AI—even when they’re explicitly told not to.

A Wharton-led survey published earlier this year, conducted in partnership with Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, found young people are ramping up their AI use, even as their concerns about it causing lazy thinking persist. A survey of nearly 2,500 U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 28 completed in October 2025 found 79% of respondents believed AI makes people lazier, and 62% said they had concerns it makes people less smart.

“What we find is deep ambivalence on how Gen Z is thinking [about] using AI,” Benjamin Lira Luttges, a postdoctoral scholar at Wharton who led research for the report, told Fortune.

Despite these fears, Gen Zers have increased their AI usage. Pew Research Center data published in June found 66% of people ages 18 to 29 have ever used an AI chatbot, such as ChatGPT, up from 55% in 2024. However, 37% of those young adults said they believed the impact of AI on them over the next 20 years would be negative, the most pessimistic attitude of any age group surveyed.

The paradox of Gen Z’s willingness to use AI at the office, even amid persistent worries about the technology’s impact on critical thinking…

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