Gender gap in AI revealed in CNBC SurveyMonkey Women at Work survey

The AI ​​craze faces a significant gender divide; While more men are showing interest in technology, women are more skeptical. According to CNBC’s 5th annual report, this SurveyMonkey Women in the Workplace survey.

While 69 percent of men surveyed said AI is a “valuable assistant and collaborator,” only 61 percent of women agreed with this statement. Half of the women surveyed are skeptical of AI, saying “using AI at work feels like cheating.” Only 43% of men agreed with this view.

The survey of 6,330 people, conducted from February 10 to February 16, comes just three years after the generative AI boom began with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Since then, chatbots have proliferated, and other services have followed, such as AI-generated photo and video services, coding agents, and all sorts of tools that now make it easy to create apps with just a few text prompts and mouse clicks.

Wall Street believes AI will replace much of the enterprise software stack, which explains why software stocks took a hit last year.

In the workplace, men use artificial intelligence more often than women. Almost two-thirds of women (64%) and 55% of men say they have never used artificial intelligence at work. When it comes to AI power users, they are also more likely to be male; While 14 percent say they use artificial intelligence “several times a day,” this rate is 9 percent for women.

This is now an issue that is constantly on the agenda of company managers. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called AI “critical to the future success of our company,” and said at the bank’s 2026 investor day that nearly two-thirds of the company now uses an internal broad language model. Dimon said AI will eliminate jobs, so companies would be better off retraining people.

While men are more likely to use AI, they still need to do more work on it, they say. Nearly 59% of men surveyed say they need more training on how to use AI in the workplace, with 39% expressing fear of missing out (FOMO) if they don’t adopt it, compared to 35% of women. 42 percent of women “strongly disagree” with the idea that not adopting artificial intelligence will lead to losses in business, while this rate is 36 percent for men.

What happens if women do not enter AI training at the same pace as men? Founder and former LeanIn.Org Meta Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg addressed this question in a December interview.

“We know AI is going to be challenging for jobs, and it’s going to be the most challenging for people who don’t know how to use these tools,” Sandberg said.

If more men than women use AI, especially early in their careers, this could widen the gender gap at a time when women are missing out on promotion to the first executive-level position. This has ripple effects throughout the rest of their careers.

“We’re going to see disproportionate impacts,” Sandberg said, “and that would be a real shame for our companies.” [and] It’s bad for our economy.”

— CNBC’s Nick Wells contributed to this report.

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