Gen Z is over-relying on AI at work—and it could cost them their careers

Half of workers today admit they’re over-reliant on AI, according to a new study from software company GoTo and Workplace Intelligence, a research agency focused on the nature of work. The 2026 Pulse of Work report—a survey of 2,500 respondents of both knowledge workers and IT managers on AI deployment—found that Gen Z workers were especially likely to treat the tech as a crutch, and 62% admitted to it. 

Some young workers think that overreliance has crossed a critical turning point: 40% say they can’t get by without the technology. GoTo CEO Rich Veldran told Fortune an overreliance on AI poses a sticky dilemma, especially for younger workers looking to learn the ropes.

“It’s only in the rearview mirror that folks will look back and say, ‘You know what, I’m actually relying on it too much. Perhaps I’m not learning some of the things I need to learn,'” he said.

While AI takes over more work functions, firms are pushing the tech on employees regardless of their comfort using it. Some, like Amazon, even encourage “tokenmaxxing,” or using as many AI tokens (the basic building block of AI prompts) among workers as possible. But according to Veldran, growing in an AI-enabled company requires a delicate balance between adopting the technology and developing one’s own expertise and skill set.

“Use AI to take work out of the system because it does a tremendous job of that,” Veldran said. “Don’t cede to it all human judgment.”

The tension young workers face with AI adoption

Striking that balance is important not just for career development but for cognitive ability. A 2025 Microsoft study found that leaning too heavily on AI tools is associated with weaker critical thinking.

There’s also a brewing tension between managers and workers around AI adoption. Some Gen Z workers today are actively sabotaging their company’s AI rollout out of fear the technology will take their job, according to a study from enterprise AI firm Writer. Veldran said that’s a conflict that showed up in GoTo’s survey results as well. He said the anxiety stems from the belief that workers will prove their irrelevance if AI can do the tasks they’re paid to perform.

“There’s also the fear of if you depend too much on [AI] what you’re doing isn’t as valuable,” he said, “if what you’re really doing is just extracting answers from AI and not adding a lot of other personal value. Anybody can do that.”

There’s growing evidence that encouraging workers to integrate AI—rather than replacing them outright—may be the smarter play. A recent Gartner study found no difference in productivity returns between AI-enabled companies that have cut workers and those that haven’t. Meanwhile, some employers report reserving raises for workers who are leading the charge on AI adoption, according to a separate Workplace Intelligence survey.

“The super-users we surveyed were around 3x more likely to have received both a promotion and pay raise in the past year, compared to employees who have been slow to adopt these tools,” Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, said in a statement. 

Still, fears of displacement aren’t without basis. Regardless of whether or not AI-related layoffs increase company returns, more than 40% of CEOs plan to cut junior roles anyway, according to a recent survey of executives from consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the same junior roles that young workers take to start their climb up the company ladder.

That leaves Gen Z in a tough spot: either adopt the technology and risk growing dependent on it, or resist it and get left behind.

Veldran framed it as a generational reckoning. “You haven’t had those experiences necessarily where you’re formulating a strategy, you had to do the work yourself, you had to earn your stripes,” he said. “You learn from those experiences and that gives you confidence as you move up the chain.”