29% of employees admit sabotaging their company's AI strategy. Among Gen Z it's 44%.

AI at work has a problem nobody put on the roadmap: a lot of employees are quietly sabotaging it.

The research comes from Writer with the independent firm Workplace Intelligence: 2,400 knowledge workers across the US, UK and Europe, including 1,200 C-suite leaders, surveyed in April 2026 and back in the news after Fortune’s July 30, 2026 write-up. The finding: 29% of employees admitted actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy, rising to 44% among Gen Z workers.

The methods are specific

Not vague foot-dragging: feeding proprietary company information into unapproved public AI tools. Running shadow AI outside the sanctioned stack. Flatly refusing mandated tools. Tampering with performance reviews. And in some cases, deliberately producing low-quality work so the AI looks ineffective.

Of those who admitted it, 30% named AI automation as a chief concern. In plain terms, they are worried the tool is being installed to replace them.

The part that makes it bleak

In the same research, 75% of executives conceded their company’s AI strategy is more for show than a real guide, and 60% said they would consider cutting employees who refuse to adopt AI. Meanwhile the heaviest AI users were roughly three times more likely to have received both a promotion and a raise in the past year.

So the sabotage is aimed at a strategy leadership does not fully believe in, and it raises the odds of exactly the outcome people are afraid of.