We worry about AI taking our jobs.
Perhaps we need to worry about it taking our friends.

The latest research published in HBR shows therapy and companionship is once again the most common AI use case, and its share has more than doubled from 5% to 11% in a single year.
This is the 3rd year that AI in the Wild have looked at how humans are evolving alongside AI, with 12,000+ use cases analysed.

For years we've talked about AI as a productivity tool. It’s faster for writing, code, analysing and researching.

All good uses, but so many people are finding value in other places...
They're using AI as a coach, confidant, mentor, source of reassurance or someone to help them think through difficult decisions.

In other words, AI is becoming a companion.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s still plenty of technical use cases out there.
The much-hyped agentic AI as entered the top 10.

Yet when you take a closer look at the use cases, most organisations are still experimenting with relatively contained agentic use cases like task coordination, note routing and workflow automation.

We're still a long way from the fully autonomous enterprise many headlines promise.
The technology is moving fast, organisations are moving much slower.
And perhaps that's a good thing.

And of course rounding out the top 10 are the fun parts!
In corporate adoption, I always see fun and novelty as the gateway to serious AI use. People experiment with something low risk that they can effortlessly conquer and then take a chance with something bigger.

So another year and another shift in how we work with AI.

AI is moving closer to us and our decisions, relationships, feelings and thoughts.
That creates incredible opportunities, but is also a nudge to think through what you choose to keep doing yourself.

♻️ Repost to help someone think about how they use AI.
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