Gives survey figures on how often AI is replacing delegation to humans and how heavily outputs are edited, useful for understanding real adoption of agents at work.
Key takeaways · AI-distilled
In an Epoch AI/Ipsos survey of 1,106 employed US adults (July 10-19, 2026), 20% said AI now handles mostly all or all of at least one task previously delegated to a coworker or contractor.
That reallocation was most common for analyzing data (7.1% of respondents), reading work documents (5.7%) and maintaining records (5.3%); the authors note task-level substitution does not necessarily mean worker displacement.
Among workers doing each of ten tasks, AI use ranged from 25% (maintaining records) to 57% (designing systems and software).
Time savings track how much AI does: workers reported saving time on 37% of tasks where AI did part of the work, versus 53% where it did most or all of it.
Across AI-assisted tasks, 66% of outputs were used unchanged or with minor edits, while 5% were majorly reworked or mostly redone.
