The secret life of AI users

AI’s double life: From secret workhorse to open obsession—and the workers, bosses, and institutions caught in the lie.

Author

Malcolm Frank, CEO
June 16, 2025

The secret life of AI users

There’s a pattern in human behavior: if something is powerful, a little risky, and socially ambiguous, people use it—and deny such use. Calculators on math homework. Quiet Googling during Zoom calls. Binge-watching Netflix while “working from home.” Steroids in baseball. The tools change, the instinct doesn’t.

Last week’s ChatGPT outage was a masterclass in accidental confession. Productivity stalled. Meetings floundered. And just like that, it became obvious: millions rely on AI at work—they just don’t tell their bosses.

In universities, the secrecy is even thinner. A Guardian survey found thousands of UK students caught using AI to cheat. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Most aren't getting caught; they're getting clever.

AI’s real appeal isn’t magic or mystery—it’s velocity. It’s a shortcut to “good enough” without the effort.

This part of the story isn’t about tools; it’s about us. Our quiet, persistent drive to cut corners while maintaining the illusion of effort.

Relatively soon, the best employees will brag about how effectively they harness the power of AI. But, for now, too many are playing an age-old game with new technology.

ChatGPT outage shows just how many people are using AI at work

“I no longer know how to work”: ChatGPT outage causes panic among some employees.

​​Revealed: Thousands of UK university students caught cheating using AI

Guardian investigation finds almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating – and experts says these are tip of the iceberg.

The Meta AI app is a privacy disaster

It sounds like the start of a 21st-century horror film: Your browser history has been public all along, and you had no idea. 

“You cannot stop this from happening.” The harsh reality of AI and the white collar job market 

“I’m really convinced that anybody whose job is done on a computer all day is over. It’s just a matter of time.”

McKinsey: Seizing the agentic AI advantage

A CEO playbook to solve the gen AI paradox and unlock scalable impact with AI agents.

Why Gen Z Is “enormously attractive” to employers

Because they are “Generation AI.”

A16Z: 16 Changes to AI in the enterprise: 2025 edition

The view from 100 CIOs.  

Point: Sam Altman on “the gentile singularity” which will soon arrive

“We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be.”

Counterpoint: Why superintelligent AI isn’t taking over anytime soon

Are AI CEOs over-hyping how close we are to AGI?

Agent of the Week: Momentic

Automate software testing with AI-driven efficiency.

“The illusion of thinking”

Apple researchers highlight the current limitations of reasoning models. 

The two-step in telecom: British Telecom boss Kirkby expects AI to deepen job cuts

BT's plans to cull more than 40,000 jobs and strip out 3 billion pounds ($4 billion) of costs by the end of the decade "did not reflect the full potential of AI."

AI is disrupting the advertising business in a big way — industry leaders explain how

AI disruption is “unnerving investors in every industry, and it’s totally disrupting our business,” WPP’s outgoing boss Mark Read told CNBC.

Is AI the reason for your layoff? New York becomes the first state to require companies to disclose if so

It's the first official statewide move towards understanding AI's effect on the labor market.

How Accenture’s new distiller framework is making enterprise AI agents as simple as building with Lego

Providing developers with an enterprise-grade platform to build, deploy and scale advanced AI agents rapidly.

Why most enterprise AI agents never reach production and how Databricks plans to fix it

The slowdown? Most companies are still relying on manual evaluations with a process that’s slow, inconsistent and difficult to scale.

And one more thing…

Hilarious AI-generated Bigfoot vlogs prove AI's worth as a creative tool

It makes that fuzzy Bigfoot video look a little silly.

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