Widespread adoption of ChatGPT has not led to wholesale cheating at work and school, with users primarily employing the technology as an assistant for practical guidance rather than automating entire tasks.
A large-scale study by Harvard’s David Deming and OpenAI economists found ChatGPT usage appears more practical than researchers expected, challenging predictions of massive workplace disruption, reports Harvard Gazette.
The research analysed nearly 1 million messages sent between May 2024 and June 2025, revealing that approximately 10 per cent of the global adult population now uses the technology, with adults aged 18 to 25 responsible for nearly half of ChatGPT’s 2.6 billion daily messages.
The study uncovered dramatic demographic shifts since ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch. Whilst roughly 80 per cent of early users had traditionally male names, users with traditionally female names now constitute just over half of all users as of July 2025.
“I knew young people would be heavier users. But the scale is surprising. It suggests this generation will be truly AI native,” said Deming, Harvard’s Danoff Dean of Harvard College and Kennedy School professor.
Geographic patterns also shifted significantly, with middle-income countries including South Korea and Chile now adopting the technology faster than wealthier economies, eliminating previous usage gaps between countries like Brazil and the United States.
Personal usage has far outpaced work-related applications, accounting for nearly three-quarters of messages sent via ChatGPT’s consumer plans by June 2025, up from an even split the previous year.
The most common usage categories included seeking information (24 per cent), practical guidance (29 per cent), and writing assistance (24 per cent), with users treating the platform more like an adaptive conversation partner than a simple automation tool.
“The way people are using it is so general that it applies to every job,” Deming concluded. “It makes me even more sceptical of the narrative that AI is replacing entry-level positions.”
