If you send what AI writes without reading it, they think less of you. That was the clearest message from our community when we asked about AI at work. Some said it saves them time on the mechanical parts of the job, as long as the thinking stays with them.
How are people using AI at work?
For everything from Teams messages and basic emails to presentations and strategy. Every leader in Australia wants staff to use more AI, and our community described what happens when they do.
The end is upon us - to echo others, people seemingly can't even use Teams for chatting without cycling the messages through AI. We've lost the ability for critical thought, inputs, and variability. Compounded if people haven't changed the AI settings to challenge the inputs, it's an AI echo chamber, today's version of the participation medal..
I'm hating it. Nobody writes anything anymore so you get sent whole emails that haven't been proofread or properly tied to the ask. The worst is when people send you an entire report or presentation and ask for feedback, when they haven't even developed it or reviewed it themselves. You're essentially doing their work for them.
Does using AI at work hurt your credibility?
It can. People told us they stop asking certain colleagues for an opinion once they know the work came from AI. One in-house legal team wrote a guide for the people sending it instructions.
I'm in-house legal and we have actually just written a guide for our stakeholders because all of our instructions were AI slop that our stakeholders couldn't even explain to us when asked. I don't care if people want to use it but at least do me the courtesy of reading whatever garbage it spits out so when I ask you questions you know what the hell I'm talking about 😒
It is atrophying peoples brains, what used to be a simple email response is now being submitted to an LLM. Anyone who knowingly uses ai I avoid asking for their opinion or for them to review work as they are blatantly useless and it's only getting worse with time
What does AI mean for juniors and graduates?
More than one person worried that juniors are skipping the part of the job where judgement gets built.
I gave a junior the opportunity to be secretariat for an exec group meeting, so she'd meet people, be seen, have the chance to understand context. She came out and said I should just use AI next time. Was floored.
Consultants are being almost forced to use AI but then told to 'own the outputs'. Idk how a fresh out of uni associate is meant to exercise judgement when these tools are rapidly spitting out compelling opinions. There's no critical thought from them anymore. I genuinely worry for when they're the ones meant to be leading.
Is anyone in favour of AI at work?
Yes, with conditions. The case for it was about saving time on the routine work.
While I am a cynic about certain AI use cases, I think a lot of the folk in these responses seem to be delusional as to the quality or utility of their own pre-AI work. Is AI slop any worse than half the slop corporate Australia was spitting in the first place? I would say no, especially in cases where AI has been used somewhat thoughtfully. I find it to be a massive time saver for doing the mechanical aspects of my job, even if I reserve most of the strategic or critical thinking for my own brain.
In summary - people want efficiency (achieved through AI in the short term) but disregard the long term impacts with decline in technical acumen
Can AI hide who knows what they're doing?
For a while. Work that looks polished and falls apart under one question came up more than once.
It also masks those who are incompetent. People using AI to produce work that is average enough to be plausible but they have no depth of understanding.
Their expertise is to the extent that copilot allows. So in other words I can't learn anything from them that I can't get out of co pilot.
It's a great tool but it's also allowing organisations to believe they can raise productivity without realising it's at the cost of intellectual depth and integrity of knowledge.
How do you use AI at work without losing trust?
Most people don't know how to use AI properly, and their colleagues can tell. Read what it produces before you send it. Make sure you can explain every line when someone asks a question. Change the settings so it challenges your ideas instead of agreeing with them.
Nobody will say anything. If you know, you know. Don't be that person who asks Copilot before asking their colleagues.
This article draws on our Big Conversation "Did you run it through Copilot?", which has the original slides.
Source: The Aussie Corporate community poll, data as at September 2026. Spotted an error? Correct something.
