Measuring the Self-Reported Impact of Early-2026 AI on Technical Worker Productivity

Summary In February–April 2026, we ran a survey of 349 technical workers (including 87 software engineers, 71 researchers, 129 academics and PhD students, and 48 founders and managers) about their usage of AI tools. Compared to previous work, our survey is one of the more detailed surveys of technical workers’ self-reported gains from frontier AI tools. 1 We attempt to capture gains due to AI in terms of ‘value’ (how much more value are you creating with AI), rather than ‘speed’ (how long would it have take