That sentence links to https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/07/28/a...

Here's the relevant paragraph from that story:

> Yet those numbers may have recently levelled off. In May economists at the Census Bureau reported that “ai use remained relatively steady in many sectors over the last six months.” A survey by Jon Hartley of the University of Texas at Austin and others has found that about 33% of people now use ai at work, down from a peak of 46% in mid-2025.

Coincidentally I posted an updated chart of AI use according to the Census Bureau this morning - https://simonwillison.net/2026/Nov/2/census-bureau-super-int... - they changed their methodology in December but the numbers have been trending up in 2026.

As for the "survey by Jon Hartley", I think that's this one: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5136877 - "Job Loss Fears in the First Years of Generative Artificial Intelligence".

They surveyed ~24,000 people with the question "Do you use generative AI for your job?", then later asked which of the following tools they used:

ChatGPT, Midjourney, Claude, Gemini, Github Copilot, Scribe, Embedded products, DeepSeek, Apple Intelligence, Meta AI (Llama), Adobe Firefly

After even more digging, I think I found the raw data for their survey in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250910015550/https://generativ...

Frustratingly, it looks like that only has their 2024 and 2025 data - the 2026 data is what would show that "33% of people now use ai at work" number quoted in the Economist article, but https://generativeairesearch.org/ no longer loads and the Internet Archive don't seem to have captured anything later than 2025.