We asked 541 people who are students and people switching careers how they use AI at work. They answered The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026. Here is how far along they are, what holds them back, what they want from AI next and which tools the most advanced teams use, compared with all 14,452 people in the benchmark.
Key findings
- Students and career switchers are behind everyone else in the benchmark. 10% are leaders, against 14% of all respondents, and 82% are still early.
- The biggest blocker is picking the right tools (36%), followed by the skills gap (28%). More people here name keeping up with how fast AI moves: 12% against 5% across the benchmark.
- Their top goal is to build their AI skills (31%). More of them than average want to build an AI product: 20% against 9%.
- ChatGPT is the most used AI tool (81% of those who named a tool), then Claude (63%) and Gemini (58%). DeepSeek stands out: 11% use it, against 2% of all respondents.
How far along students and career switchers are with AI
The largest share of students and career switchers say they are “just exploring” (66%). 6% say AI is used across their company and 4% are rolling it out to their team.
- Just exploring
- Testing a few tools
- Using 1 to 3 tools for real
- Rolling out to their team
- Used across the company
- Helping others with AI
What holds students and career switchers back
We asked for the single biggest blocker. Picking the right tools leads at 36%. If that is you too: shortlist tools by the job you need done.
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
What they want from AI in the next 90 days
31% want to build their AI skills, 26% want to save time and 20% want to build an AI product.
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
The AI tools students and career switchers use
People named 3.9 AI tools each on average. These are the 12 most used, as a share of the 484 people here who named at least one. Compare any of them in our AI tool database.
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
What the leaders use differently
Leaders are the 54 students and career switchers whose AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company. They named 3.7 tools each, against 3.7 for the 441 who are still early. These are the clearest differences.
| Tool | Leaders | Early | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 68% | 82% | -14 pts |
- Share of each group who use the tool. Leaders: 50 people, early: 394 people.
Where they use AI at work
Writing comes first (63%), then research (55%) and personal productivity (47%). People could pick several areas.
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
- Asked July 20 to August 31, 2026: 541 answers.
Who answered
30% decide, recommend or have a say in what their company buys.
Company size
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
Top industries
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
Say in what their company buys
- Students and career switchers
- All respondents
What leaders told The AI Report podcast
“You understand that you are now delegating your work to AI. It's not another tool.”
Roy Mann, Co-founder at monday.com. Most of the shift is mental. A developer on Roy's team was frightened when an agent began shipping UI fixes faster than he could read the requests. A week later he was happy, because he had stopped competing with the agent and started operating it. Treat AI as work you delegate, not as a better search box. Watch or read the episode.
“Until you see examples, your brain doesn't come up with use cases.”
Andrew Warner, Founder at Mixergy. Be honest about the learning curve. Andrew says that right now, AI tools mostly don't save time on net. It can take a long time exploring to find something that saves ten minutes a day, but that exploring is how you learn. One way to find real uses is to get together with friends or colleagues and have them show what they've built. Watch or read the episode.
“Most average business users don't understand what they've just allowed there, which is suddenly that thing can access all of that data.”
Cillian Kieran, CEO and Founder at Ethyca. Think before you click accept on an AI connector. Linking an assistant to your CRM, Stripe, QuickBooks or Shopify can quietly give it access to everything in those systems. Cillian describes how, over ten or twelve weeks of casual questions, a small store owner could move sensitive purchase and card data across boundaries it shouldn't cross without realizing it. Understand exactly what you are permitting before you connect a system, and limit access to what the task actually needs. Watch or read the episode.
Next steps
- Shortlist tools by the job you need done. The AI Report tool database compares 5,500+ AI tools by use case and price.
- Get the five-minute daily briefing. The AI Report covers the AI news that matters at work, every weekday.
- Get a plan built for you. The AI Report Pro turns your benchmark answers into a 90-day AI plan, step by step.
How do you compare?
Answer the same nine quick questions as these 14,452 people. See which of five AI types you are, how you compare with readers like you, and get a free 30-day AI roadmap by email.
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Compare with other groups
The full benchmark: AI at Work Benchmark 2026, with every industry, role and company size side by side.
By industry: Professional services, Healthcare, Software and tech, Education, Marketing and media, Manufacturing, Nonprofits and government, Financial services, Retail and e-commerce, Real estate, Legal.
By role: Executives and founders, Directors, Managers and team leads, Individual contributors, Consultants and advisors.
By company size: Solo professionals, Small businesses (2 to 50), Mid-size companies (51 to 1,000), Large enterprises (1,001+).
About this data
These numbers come from The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark. Between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026, 14,452 people completed it. This page covers the 541 students and people switching careers.
- Answers are self-reported. People chose their own industry, role, company size and stage.
- “Early” means just exploring or testing a few tools. “Leaders” means AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company.
- People could pick more than one tool, so tool shares add up to more than 100%. Tool shares are out of the 484 people here who named at least one tool.
- Where people use AI was asked from July 20 to August 31, 2026 (541 answers here).
- The role question changed on September 1, 2026. We grouped the old and new answers into six role groups.
- Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.
- We never publish individual answers. A group only gets a page with 100 or more people, and we only compare groups of 30 or more.
- People who take an AI newsletter's quiz are more interested in AI than the average worker, so read these numbers as a benchmark of people actively working on AI, not a national average.
Last updated November 2, 2026. To cite this page: The AI Report, AI at Work Benchmark 2026, theaireport.ai/tools/benchmark.