WalkMe Survey Finds U.S. Workers Overconfident in AI Skills

The AI software company WalkMe released its third annual AI at Work Pulse Survey, finding that U.S. employees are lying less about their AI skills than in previous years. The share of workers pretending to know AI during meetings dropped from 45.2% in 2025 to 28.3% in 2026.

Despite this decrease in deception, CEO Dan Adika warns that the shift reflects growing overconfidence rather than actual competence. While 90% of workers feel confident using AI, only 24.6% report that the technology works on the first try. Additionally, half of the surveyed employees spent more time prompting AI than they would have spent performing the tasks manually.

Adika argues that this confidence gap prevents enterprises from achieving actual P&L savings and creates risks for employees. He suggests that by training AI to create a company brain, workers may be automating their own roles and making themselves redundant. The data highlights that Gen Z is the most confident cohort at 94.1%, but also the most likely to have caused workplace problems due to overstated skills. Global Field CTO KJ Kusch noted that corporate leadership across all levels is currently learning AI in real time.