A new survey from Imperial College London has put a number on one of the strangest features of the current AI workplace: the people most likely to use artificial intelligence every day are also the people most likely to hide that they are doing it.
The research, from Imperial’s newly launched Lifelong Learning division, surveyed more than 2,000 UK workers across five sectors — healthcare and life sciences, technology and digital, energy and sustainability, engineering, and manufacturing and infrastructure, as Imperial describes the study. The headline finding, reported by TechRadar on 13 November: 29% of Gen Z workers admit to using AI without their employer’s knowledge — 11 percentage points higher than Millennials and more than double the figure for Gen X.
Why younger workers are keeping quiet
The survey reads less like a confession and more like a signal of fear. Alongside the secret-usage numbers:
- 35% of Gen Z respondents say using AI at work makes them feel dishonest.
- 26% believe their colleagues or managers would view their AI use negatively if it were known.
- 59% of all workers believe there is a skills gap in their industry, which complicates any simple story about confident young adopters racing ahead.
The TechRadar report quotes Heather Haseley, chief lifelong learning officer at Imperial Lifelong Learning, saying the findings “point to trepidation amongst UK workers around the use of AI and how it will impact the economy.”
There is a career logic hiding inside that anxiety. Earlier survey work in this area, covered by HR Dive, found nearly half of Gen Z and millennial workers feared AI could replace their jobs — one of the top reasons they didn’t want to disclose using it. The paradox is sharp: the group whose entry-level roles AI most reshapes is the group most hesitant to be seen leaning on it.
The manager’s side of the trust gap
From an employer’s point of view, shadow AI is both a productivity leak and a governance gap. When a third of a cohort uses tools off the books, companies cannot see where the work is actually going, cannot audit what data is being pasted into which models, and cannot build shared practice out of what individuals learn alone.
As we covered in The Competence Gap: Firms Are Wiring In AI While Training Nobody, most businesses rolling out AI are still spending on tools rather than training. The Imperial numbers are what that gap looks like from the employee’s chair: no mandate, no permission, no framework — so people improvise quietly.
Why honesty might actually be the better career move
The rational case for going public about AI use is stronger than the fears suggest, for three reasons:
First, demonstrated AI fluency is being priced into hiring. SEEK’s New Zealand data shows AI skills now appear in 4.0% of all NZ job ads, and AI ethics and governance mentions up 368.8% year on year — as we analysed in AI Job Ads in New Zealand Up 93 Percent. The fastest-growing demand is not for people who quietly use AI, but for people who can show they use it well and responsibly.
Second, evaluation — being visibly good at directing AI — is the skill employers are learning to test for. A worker whose AI use is invisible cannot build a reputation on it. The person whose manager knows they rebuilt a reporting workflow with AI assistance has evidence; the secret user has done the same work and collected none of the credit.
Third, the honesty problem scales badly. Gartner’s widely cited projection — which we covered in AI Will Create More Jobs Than It Kills by 2030 — expects AI to create more jobs than it eliminates, but with a painful transition gap. Workplaces that normalise open AI use will retrain and redeploy faster than ones where the usage is underground.
What would fix the secrecy
The survey’s implicit recommendations are almost boring: published AI policies per role, training that goes beyond a one-off webinar, and managers who model AI use themselves. The 59% skills-gap number is the tell — workers are not hiding AI because they are up to something; many are hiding it because nobody has told them where the lines are.
For now, the labour market is sending a clearer message than most employers are: the premium is shifting from “do you use AI?” to “can you show it?” — and you can’t show what you’re hiding.
FAQ
What is shadow AI? Shadow AI is the use of AI chatbots or tools at work without the employer’s knowledge or approval. Imperial’s survey found 29% of Gen Z workers do it, more than double the rate of Gen X.
How many Gen Z workers hide their AI use at work? In Imperial College London’s Lifelong Learning survey of 2,000+ UK workers, 29% of Gen Z respondents said they use AI without their employer’s knowledge. 35% said using AI makes them feel dishonest.
Why do employees hide AI use from bosses? Survey respondents cited fear of how colleagues and managers would view it (26% expected a negative reaction) and, in earlier surveys, fear that visible AI reliance could make them look replaceable.
Is hiding AI use bad for your career? The hiring data points the other way: job ads increasingly ask for demonstrated AI skills, and AI ethics/governance mentions are among the fastest-growing categories. Visible, responsible AI fluency is becoming easier to sell than secret fluency.
— CJ Murden, editor of Singularity.Kiwi. Former digital technologies teacher, author of AI-focused books. Writing with a New Zealand focus.
