I’m starting to wonder if the massive disconnect in terms of understanding artificial intelligence comes from the media narrative, the perspective of those who run businesses, and the actual people themselves…

For the past two years, the AI conversation has been dominated by a very specific narrative. We’ve been told that artificial intelligence is going to transform productivity and that it will make work more efficient. The result of that will reduce costs and help organizations do more with less. Whether you’re reading quarterly earnings reports, listening to people like me, or sitting through corporate strategy presentations, the message is remarkably consistent… AI is a work story.

Or is it?

The Harvard Business Review published a fascinating analysis of how people are actually using AI in 2026… and the story looks very different from the narrative we’re being fed. While businesses promise to solve for efficiency, it looks like the people are solving for anxiety. Yep, the number one use case is “therapy and companionship” with “troubleshooting” and “fun and nonsense” coming in second and third. That should probably make all of us pause for a moment. This feels like the most important disconnect in the entire AI conversation. When individuals use AI, they often turn to it for something personal. They use it to think through difficult decisions… to draft uncomfortable emails… to rehearse conversations… to explore ideas… to get unstuck. And, if I’m being honest, that feels right coming from someone who also loves vibe coding, deploying agents and more.

But it’s worth thinking about this for a moment.

Among all of the extraordinary things these systems can do… writing, coding, researching, analyzing, creating and automating… one of the strongest signals emerging from the market is that people want someone (or something) to talk to. Not because AI is necessarily better than human relationships (it’s not), but because it is available. It responds… it listens… it helps people process uncertainty… it doesn’t judge (or at least it doesn’t make people feel judged). That tells us something important. Maybe the hyperscalers spent so much time focusing on capability that they missed what people were actually looking for. And the more I think about it, the more this feels connected to a broader cultural story. Last week, I wrote about an episode of The Daily from The New York Times that followed an elderly woman who had developed a meaningful relationship with an AI companion. What made that story so emotionally powerful was that the real comparison was not between AI and human connection. The real comparison was between a robot and long hours of silence. The technology became interesting because the human problem underneath it was so profound.

This Harvard Business Review research feels like another version of the same story.

People are not only using AI because it is smart. They are using it because it helps reduce friction. Not just operational friction… emotional friction. The blank page… the difficult email… the awkward conversation… the thing they don’t understand… the feeling of being overwhelmed… the uncertainty of not knowing where to start.

Businesses keep talking about productivity… but people are using AI for confidence.

That changes how we should think about AI adoption at work, doesn’t it? The AI revolution may not be arriving as one giant corporate transformation. It may be arriving as a thousand tiny habits woven into our daily lives. Small moments where people reach for AI not because a company mandated it, but because it helps them navigate the complexity and stress of what’s happening at work. And that’s where this becomes both fascinating and a little weird. Because if AI is increasingly becoming a thinking partner (and not just an answer engine), then we are talking about a new cognitive and emotional layer sitting between people, their team members and the business. A place where they think, decide, vent, reflect and rehearse outside of the ways that they have done this for decades before.

I’m optimistic about AI… I use it every day… I believe it will create extraordinary new capabilities for our world.

But I also think we should pay attention to what this signal reveals. If companionship and emotional support continue to emerge as some of the most important use cases, then the real story may not be about deploying the smartest technology we’ve ever built. The real story may be that AI is succeeding because it is solving for something much more human than productivity.

The real story is how anxiety is becoming one of the defining emotions of modern life… and how AI is increasingly becoming the place people go when they want relief from it.

This (and some other topics) is what Trudie Mason and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

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