"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things."
—Theodore Levitt, Economist and Professor
The AI Breakdown
Where Workplace AI Use Is Actually Growing
Gallup’s Q4 2025 data points to a quiet but important shift. The number of people using AI at work hasn’t surged. What’s changing is how regularly it shows up in real workflows.
The share of people using AI hasn’t jumped. Frequency has. Daily use moved to 12%. Weekly use reached 26%. And about half of workers still don’t use it at all. That mix matters. Adoption grows slowly. Habits form faster.
Where people already use these tools, they’re using them more often. Knowledge-heavy work leads the way. Technology, finance, professional services, and higher education keep pulling ahead because the work already lives in documents, dashboards, and decisions. People don’t have to invent reasons to use AI there. It fits.
Roles follow the same logic. Leaders use AI the most, and they rely on it regularly. That’s less about curiosity and more about workload. Planning, prioritization, and synthesis show up daily in leadership roles, and AI handles those tasks well. Managers and individual contributors move in the same direction, just on a slower timeline.
The strongest signal comes from how work gets done. Roles that can be done remotely show much higher use than those tied to physical presence. AI shows up where work already flows through screens.
Practical Steps for Teams
Audit frequency, not access. Track who uses AI weekly or daily. That’s where productivity changes show up.
Design role-specific use cases. Leaders see value first because tools map to their work. Do the same for other roles.
Support remote-capable workflows. AI compounds where digital work already flows.
Prompt of the Week
NADA Show 2026 is basically the Super Bowl of auto retail. But, with less football and way more walking.
If your mental map currently looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, this AI prompt is the first one to drop into your chatbot:
I’m attending NADA Show 2026 and want help getting oriented quickly.
Before giving advice, ask me:
-My role and core responsibilities
-What decisions I influence or own back home
-What I want to walk away stronger at by the end of the show
-Whether this is my first NADA or I’ve been before
Then:
-Explain how someone in my position typically gets value from the show
-Outline where people like me usually spend most of their time during the week
-Call out common time traps or easy missteps for this role
Want the rest of our AI cheat codes for NADA? We’ve got more where that came from, plus all the resources you need to build your ideal schedule.
Fresh Finds for Auto Pros
Management & Operations: Seez
A full AI-powered automotive ecosystem that helps dealers streamline core operations and digital retail, including centralized CRM/DMS, inventory, and customer engagement in one place.
Finance & Insurance: Karus
Emerging fintech-AI startup focused on automotive lending. Helps dealers & lenders improve underwriting accuracy and speed approvals while managing risk.
Service and Parts: Carviz
An app that simplifies vehicle inspections for trade-ins, service, and re-marketing. Uses AI with guided video workflows to scan exterior, interior, tires, and even engine sound.
Hear from the Experts
Jay Ku believes AI should help sales teams perform at their best in real moments with real customers.
In this episode of Auto Collabs, Jay shares the thinking behind Hey Greenlight, where AI tools like Signal and Wingman are built to support the conversation—not script it.
This is AI shaped by dealership pain points, designed for the people doing the work.
Bits and Bytes
The U.S. Transportation Department plans to use Google Gemini to draft new federal regulations. ♊️
Scammers are using a simple typo trick to impersonate Microsoft and Marriott in new phishing attack. 🎣
Despite rumors, recent pictures of Guy Fieri sans spikes are not AI-generated. 🩴
To help preempt fraud, eBay will soon prohibit users from employing “buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review.” 🛑
Parting Pixels
Thanks for reading along, Friend. May your bots stay operational today, and your wait-times mercifully swift.
