RESEARCH
The AI Skills Illusion Report
AI is making work faster, but it's not always making it safer or more efficient. We surveyed workers across industries to find where confidence in AI has outpaced actual capability. We discovered the risks that come with this gap, and that even the experts aren't immune.
THE DRIVERS
Why Shadow AI Is Winning
Workers aren't sneaking around policy for the fun of it. Pressure to move faster is quietly outpacing the guardrails meant to keep AI use safe
62%
say AI makes them more productive, but not more skilled
66%
say AI has made decision-making faster, but not smarter
40%
admit they would struggle to perform their job effectively without AI tools
43%
regularly use AI to complete work they do not fully understand
See the numbers behind the illusion,
"AI doesn't know when it's wrong. That isn't a flaw they're still working on, it's a known limitation. The risk isn't that employees use AI, but that they've stopped being the last line of defense between confident output and costly mistakes."
Ashu Savani
Co-Founder at TryHackMe
Inside the illusion
Gathered through Censuswide, an accredited third-party research platform, this data uncovers how rapid technological change is reshaping how workers make decisions, how they navigate uncertainty about their place in an AI-driven economy, and the new cybersecurity risks entering the workplace.
Discover how workplace pressure is becoming a growing security threat, and why employees are putting sensitive company data at risk to keep up.
Explore why AI risk is as much a cultural issue as a technical one, and what's really driving the trust gap between employees and the tools they use.
See how even security professionals are bypassing their own rules, and what that means for the industry meant to be setting the standard.
See the numbers behind the illusion,
