Does AI save time? Executives say yes, employees say no.

Does your boss preach the virtues of AI at workwhen you don’t find that AI helps you in your role? It turns out you’re not alone.

A new study AI consultancy Section surveyed 5,000 white-collar workers and found a major disparity between workers and their managers when it comes to AI and productivity.

In the study, 33% of business leaders said using AI saved them 4-8 hours per week. 19% said they saved more than 12 hours each week using AI. Only 2% of executives say AI has not saved them time.

But when it comes to non-executive employees, the sentiment around AI has completely reversed.

A whopping 40 percent of workers said that using AI in their workplace has not saved them time. 27% of workers said using AI saved them less than 2 hours per week, and only 2% of employees said AI saved them more than 12 hours per week.

Meanwhile, another damning report on AI, from software company Workday, suggests that even these estimates are exaggerated. In Workday survey, 85% of employees who said AI saved them time wasted which saved time by correcting errors made by the AI, notes the The Wall Street Journal.

AI can certainly be a productivity tool for certain industries. This is the technology sector that has adopted AI the most, according to the study. Some software developers have been able to use AI to speed up monotonous coding tasks, even at the risk of making mood coding mistakes.

However, other sectors have not enjoyed the same benefits. Retail was at the bottom of the list in the Section’s study. But overall, 85% of respondents had no work-related AI use cases or entry-level use cases.

The Section’s report also reveals that 40% of workers would agree to never use AI again.

This echoes a warning on AI issued this week in Davos by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who urged the industry to examine whether the benefits of the technology trickle down to average users.

“We will quickly lose even the social permission to consume something like energy, which is a scarce resource,” Nadella said, if AI systems “do not improve health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness in all sectors, small and large.”

Today, these reports from Section and Workday suggest that social permission is fading quickly, if AI ever had it. And that should certainly worry companies betting big on AI.