Tell someone you use AI it at work and they will either ask which one, or look horrified. It’s the new divide, causing chaos and culture wars in offices across the world.

From the arguments I’ve witnessed, it seems on one side there are people who treat AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude like a helpful colleague, and on the other, those who view it as the professional equivalent of sneaking a smartphone into a school exam. It doesn’t help that our workplaces aren’t entirely clear on where they stand either. In the UK, only 54 per cent of firms actively use AI, according to the British Chambers of Commerce. Yet last month, Deloitte surveyed 25,000 UK adults and found that Britons spend £1bn a year of their own money on AI tools for work, and a third of people are using it without their employer’s permission.The AI divide is having effects on office life when it comes to communication, management and job security. One former colleague now in the publishing industry tells me her pet peeve is when people send messages written by AI – which she described as “disrespectful” because it indicates they don’t deign her worthy of real, human interaction.

Meanwhile, at the finance company where........

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