HR’s big AI problem & how we got here

We have an AI problem in HR, and it’s a self-perpetuating loop.

You’ve seen the meme about the meeting that could have been an email. And now our 2026 meme-in-motion is the 10-page AI-generated output that could have been a bullet-pointed Slack message. Say what you will, but AI has added work to a lot of our plates; few would deny that.

Early 2023 generative AI promised to free up more time for strategic planning. It will do the boring routine tasks you don’t want to do! Three years later, workers across all industries are questioning whether that promised day will ever arrive. HR teams, according to our most recent study, are no exception.

More than a third of HR is still undecided on AI, and experience with AI is what will tip them

We asked HR professionals for their take on AI in HR, and assessed their overall AI-buy-in. About three in four HR professionals are bought-in to the tech, though the figure has taken a small dip since this time last year. Our analysis revealed that the top three drivers of buy-in all come down to whether they’ve seen tangible outcomes from using it.

The three statements (i.e., drivers) that predicted buy-in were:

• With AI, I have become a better leader
• I have already seen benefits of AI at my organization
• Using AI has led to positive transformation for core HR processes in my org

The data suggests that HR professionals are looking for proof to sustain their buy-in. As illustrated below, a significant share of the field feels neutral about two of the top three drivers. They have yet to pick a side, and so their buy-in is in flux. At Culture Amp, we call this group “fence-sitters,” and they’re a leader’s most swayable group.

Whether the fence-sitters will eventually take a favorable or unfavorable view of AI likely depends on what happens in the next 12 months. But, to understand what tips them, it helps to first see what sets these two groups apart.

Believers see a completely different future

We used HR professionals’ level of agreement with the statement, “Using AI has led to positive transformation for core HR processes in my org” as our primary filter. We grouped those who agreed they'd seen a core HR process positively transformed as "believers." Their continued buy-in appears to be founded in their experience with what AI has accomplished, rather than the vague faith that AI will eventually lead to positive change. In other words, they had to see it to believe it.

Those who responded with neutrality were grouped as “fence-sitters”, and those who haven’t yet seen positive AI transformation as "skeptics."

Believers are nearly three times as likely as skeptics to say AI has made them better leaders (70% vs. 25%). A majority of believers (64%) are already planning for AI to manage transactional HR work – something barely a quarter of skeptics can imagine handing over. And while two in three skeptics still expect AI to significantly improve work within two years, among believers, it's nearly unanimous, with 93% agreeing.

It’s tempting to assume that as more HR professionals adopt and familiarize themselves with AI, they’ll naturally become believers. In fact, this was the prevailing theory last year. However, 2026 data indicates that AI skepticism isn’t coming from a lack of experimentation. Something else is afoot, but we had to zoom back out to bring it into focus.

Despite using AI more, HR professionals have less confidence in it

Even as more companies and HR professionals embrace regular AI use, confidence isn’t trending in the direction many were expecting.

According to Fani Delliou, People Operations Lead at RoomPriceGenie and Culture First Community Member, creative exploration might have something to do with it. She shares:

“There is a big push on AI and efficiency but in order to dive into AI, we need to have enough space to play and empower creativity. Sometimes it feels like it's another task that we need to tick, and we shouldn't treat it this way.”

When we asked HR professionals in 2025 if their organizations encourage AI experimentation, three in four (76%) agreed. That figure rose to four in five (80%) in 2026. And the encouragement must be somewhat effective because we saw a tiny uptick in the percentage of HR professionals who say they regularly use AI to do their jobs more efficiently.

In general, we’d expect all these changes to point to a growing confidence in AI. Other waves of enhanced workplace technology (e.g. spreadsheets, email, video calls, etc) follow a similar arc. Familiarity eventually breeds trust and then reliance. The more time you spend with a tool, the more you lean into its strengths and forgive its weaknesses. So, as companies have opened the gates to more experimental AI use, you'd expect confidence in AI to rise right alongside usage.

Surprisingly, our data revealed the opposite. Belief in AI’s potential to significantly improve how we work in the next two years fell 9% points this year. And the data shows that HR’s fear of being replaced may be to blame. Last year, 71% of HR professionals were confident that using AI would augment, not replace, roles. But in 2026, only 63% share in that thinking – another big 8% point drop.

Also trending down is the share of HR professionals who say they’re going to increase how much they use AI in the next year.

Dr. Devan Kronisch, Senior Manager of Talent Management and Development at Hint Health, said that they saw the decline coming. They warned:

“When we have data showing people max out at 3 tools/agents before brain fry sets in, but boards and CEOs push for every process to be an AI process, we'll run out of the ability to make good decisions and workers willing and able to keep going before we run out of tech stack.”

Perhaps tech-fry is setting in already. But if it is, it is just the beginning. HR isn’t quite at the naysayer stage; they probably won’t be booing commencement speakers off the stage at the mention of AI. But their expectations are dropping as they continue to use and experiment with AI tools.

More of HR wants to own AI strategy. Is it self-protection?

In this same year of cooling expectations, the share of HR professionals who say AI strategy should be owned by HR jumped from 37% to 47% – almost half of the overall population. However, the data also shows that HR isn’t convinced this move will ultimately be helpful for them.

Over the same period, confidence that AI will improve the perceived value of HR expertise fell by 9% points from 47% to 38%. Make it make sense!

Ownership ambition and expectation of personal/professional gain are pointing in opposite directions. Together, they depict a profession in an uncomfortable middle place.

Imagine it like this: HR professionals are claiming the wheel of a car they don’t fully control. They can steer the car, but the road ahead is shrouded in fog. When peers are already being automated out of the workplace, the decision to grab the wheel may signify self-defense, rather than ambition.

An anonymous quote from our survey encapsulates a challenge we suspect many HR leaders are facing. They wrote:

“My fear is that due to people's limited understanding of the value HR brings, it will be far too easy for boards and execs to feel that the whole value prop can just be delivered by AI, thus less HR is needed.”

This is HR’s big AI problem. As a profession, HR is increasingly reaching for control of a technology it isn’t totally convinced will pay off for the function and field. Further, getting more buy-in from the workforce hinges on employees seeing bigger payoffs with their own eyes. This circular pattern is keeping HR on the sidelines of what is, in reality, a fundamentally people-centered shift in how we work.

As AI changes huge paradigms of work (including how performance is measured, how work is allocated, and what skills matter), employees are pushed to renegotiate their relationships with their organization and with work. HR is the function best leveraged to navigate this process. HR has the relationships, the change capacity, and the frameworks to steward employees’ social contract renegotiations without it becoming a trust collapse.

How can HR stay relevant, turn skeptics into believers, and find its way out of our big circular problem? Stay tuned for our next piece, where we’ll explore more AI in HR data and dive deeper into the future state.

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