AI isn't the problem, humans are

Most small and medium businesses worry about AI as a question of kit: which tools, which subscriptions, and whether everyone else has got further. The evidence points somewhere calmer. People are already using AI, mostly to save time, and the gains anyone has measured are smaller and less certain than the headlines suggest. So the useful questions are human ones. Which task could it help with, does it really help once you time it, and what will you do with the minutes it gives back? A cup of tea is a legitimate answer. So is the dog.

Our interest, stated first. We sell a tool that scores you. Our free AI score gives a business a number out of 100, and we sell AI search visibility work on the back of it. Nobody enjoys being graded, and a low number can feel like a verdict, but it isn't one. It measures one thing: whether AI assistants find, describe and recommend your business on the day it checks. It says nothing about your ads, your email or your social media, and nothing about the quality of your work or the person running it. A low score is something to fix, not a judgement on you.

The figures you'll hear, and what's behind them

Evidence on AI and wellbeing at work is thin, and much of it comes from people selling either AI or a cure for it. Here are the figures you're most likely to meet, and how each one holds up.

That AI makes experienced developers 19% slower. A randomised trial by METR, a research non-profit, did find that in early 2025 developers "take 19% longer" with AI tools, as its July 2025 write-up reports. But the same page now says "We believe these historical results no longer reflect the current impact of AI models". Its February 2026 update calls its newer data "an unreliable signal", because developers increasingly refused to work without AI. Don't quote the 19% as current.

That 95% of AI pilots fail. This comes from a report by MIT's NANDA project, which says "95% of organizations are getting zero return". Its own note on limitations says the figures are "directionally accurate based on individual interviews rather than official company reporting", drawn from 52 organisations and 153 survey responses at industry conferences, according to State of AI in Business 2025. That gives you a direction, not a statistic.

That 77% say AI has added to their workload. The source is a survey published in 2024 by the Upwork Research Institute, part of a freelance marketplace, and it says "Over three in four (77%) say AI tools have decreased their productivity and added to their workload in at least one way". "In at least one way" is doing a lot of work there, and the same report makes the case for hiring freelancers, which is what the company sells.

That 75% of knowledge workers use AI. This is from a survey of 31,000 people across 31 countries, run by a research firm for Microsoft and LinkedIn and published in the Microsoft Work Trend Index. It dates from 2024, and the companies that paid for it sell AI tools.

What holds up

Start with the UK's own official statistics, the DSIT Public Engagement Survey 2025/2026, from fieldwork between November 2025 and March 2026. In it, 59% of adults had used generative AI in the last three months. Of those users answering online, 54% used it for work, and 65% "used it as a way to save time". People aren't waiting for the right kit. They're already working AI into what they do.

The government's own trials are the best UK evidence on time. In a cross-government trial of an AI assistant, reported by GDS in June 2025, users "saved an average of 26 minutes a day". That figure came from people estimating their own savings in ranges, with 7,115 survey responses from 20,000 licences. The Department for Business and Trade's evaluation of the same tool, reported in August 2025, found small time savings on most tasks, with some tasks taking longer, and it "did not find evidence that time savings have led to improved productivity". One civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions trial, reported in January 2026, put the wellbeing question honestly: "I'm not sure it's improved my well-being, but I do enjoy using, like, AI".

The METR trial also left one finding that hasn't dated. Its developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and afterwards they believed it had sped them up by 20%, when in fact it had slowed them down. How AI feels and what it does can be two different things.

What to do with that

• Start with one task you already do every week, such as drafting replies, summarising a long document or making a first go at a proposal, rather than a new process built around a tool.
• Time it with a clock, not a feeling. Do it a few times each way and write the minutes down. The trials above show how easily people misjudge this.
• Keep a person checking the work. The government evaluations report users stressing the need to review what AI produces rather than send it as it comes.
• Decide in advance what the saved minutes are for. If they vanish into more of the same work, the gain has gone to the to-do list. Tea, the dog or leaving on time are all reasonable answers.

The same calm applies to being found. I reach a similar answer on whether small and medium businesses need to worry about AI search and on whether SEO is dead, and I'd point anyone being sold certainty to the piece on paying to be recommended by ChatGPT.

How much anyone really knows

The honest answer is not much, yet. We found no independent study of AI and wellbeing in smaller businesses in particular. The UK's best evidence on time saved is self-reported, the one rigorous trial has been set aside by its own authors, and the most quoted figures come from companies with something to sell. I'd rather tell you that plainly than hand you a confident number.