DIGITAL LIFE

Women are more skeptical about artificial intelligence and use the technology less at work, says research

The expansion of artificial intelligence in the corporate environment is not happening uniformly between men and women. A CNBC survey, in partnership with SurveyMonkey, released this Friday (6), indicates that women adopt AI tools less at work and tend to view them with more skepticism than men. The survey interviewed 6,330 people between February 10 and 16, 2026.

The numbers show that 64% of women said they never use AI at work, compared to 55% of men. On the other hand, among so-called "intensive users," those who resort to technology several times a day, men lead: 14% of them fall into this category, compared to only 9% of women.

The difference is not only in frequency, but also in perception. Only 61% of women consider AI a useful and collaborative tool in the professional environment. Among men, this figure rises to 69%. Moreover, half of the women interviewed associate the use of artificial intelligence at work with a form of dishonesty. Among men, this sentiment is shared by 43%.

This data suggests that, for a significant portion of female professionals, resorting to AI still carries a moral weight that does not appear with the same intensity among their male colleagues.

Even those who use it want more training...Men recognize their own shortcomings in relation to technology. Among the male respondents, 59% said they need more training to use AI at work, a significant percentage, showing that greater adoption does not mean complete mastery of the tool. Furthermore, 39% of men reported feeling the so-called "fear of falling behind" if they do not adopt the technology, compared to 35% among women.

On the other hand, 42% of women strongly disagreed with the idea that failing to use AI would result in a professional disadvantage, compared to 36% of men in the same position. In other words: women not only use it less, but they also worry less about the consequences of not using it.

Sheryl Sandberg, founder of the NGO LeanIn.Org and former COO of Meta, addressed the topic in an interview with CNBC in December. "We know that AI is going to be challenging for the job market, and it's going to be especially challenging for those who don't know how to use these tools," she said.

For Sandberg, if men advance more quickly in the adoption of AI, especially at the beginning of their careers, this could deepen existing disparities, particularly at a time when women face more obstacles to reaching their first management position. "We're going to see disproportionate impacts," she stated, "and that would be very bad for our companies and for the economy."

AI on the agenda of large corporations...The topic has gained prominence in discussions among the world's leading corporate executives. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, described AI as "critical to the future of the company" and revealed, at the bank's 2026 investor day, that almost two-thirds of employees already use an internal language model. Dimon also stated that AI will eliminate jobs and that, therefore, companies should invest in professional retraining.

This scenario is part of a transformation that has accelerated since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT at the end of 2022. Since then, text, image, video, and code generation tools have multiplied, and Wall Street has begun to bet that AI will replace much of traditional corporate software, which helps explain the fall in software company stocks in the last year.

The combination of lower usage, greater distrust, and a lower perception of urgency among women creates a scenario that could deepen existing imbalances in the labor market. The research does not pinpoint causes for this difference in behavior, but the data indicate that the adoption of AI in the corporate environment is far from gender-neutral.

Recent research from 2024 and 2025 confirms that there is a "gender gap in AI," with women demonstrating greater skepticism and a lower rate of adoption of the technology in the workplace. While about 50% of men claim to use generative AI tools, this number drops to approximately 37% among women.

The main factors explaining this behavior include (below):

Aversion to uncertainty and risk: Studies from Northeastern University indicate that women perceive AI as 11% riskier than men, especially when the economic and employment effects are uncertain.

Occupational exposure: Women predominantly occupy administrative and service roles, areas with a higher risk of replacement or automation by AI (approximately 9.6% of female jobs vs. 3.5% of male jobs).

Lack of incentive and training: Only 21% of women at the beginning of their careers are encouraged by their managers to use AI tools, compared to 33% of men.

Knowledge barriers: The self-reported level of knowledge about AI is cited as the most important factor for lower adoption, explaining almost 75% of the gender gap.

Ethical concerns and bias: Women tend to question the ethics of tools more and fear that AI systems will perpetuate existing gender biases.

This disparity can exacerbate wage and promotion inequalities, creating a "broken rung" early in a career where women miss out on leadership opportunities because they do not master technologies that are becoming central to productivity.

mundophone