Signal 80% across leaders, managers, and workers suspect colleagues use AI to look more productive

Summary

Deloitte's 2026 survey found that 80% of leaders, managers and workers worry that colleagues and teams are using AI to seem more productive than they really are. The report presents this as evidence that AI is undermining the trust on which workplace culture rests. Such suspicion reflects unresolved questions that many organizations have not addressed, including whether relying on AI is a form of cheating and what counts as hard work when software does much of the effort. When these questions go unanswered, employees quietly adopt or resist new norms on their own terms. The result can be a steady accumulation of cultural debt, as mistrust spreads across every level of the organization rather than being confined to one group.