Sam Wong

Let’s talk training

84% of People Have Never Used AI. That's Your Competitive Advantage.

·

About 84% of the world's population did not use a generative AI product in the second half of 2025. Microsoft's AI Diffusion Report (January 2026) found that 16.3% of the world's population used a generative AI product in the second half of 2025. I estimate that at least 70% of chatbot users never pick a model and do not know how models differ.

I train teams in banking, retail, education and engineering. I am still surprised by how many experienced professionals have never used an AI tool. They have not tried ChatGPT or Copilot.

Most of them were simply never shown how.

The Gap Closes Fast

When I ran five sessions for 1,500+ participants at a major Hong Kong bank, most had literally never interacted with an AI tool. People managing portfolios, running compliance, processing transactions in 13 countries. Smart people. Skilled people. People who'd simply never been given permission and a path.

The gap between "never used AI" and "productive with AI" is not years. In a 45-minute session with 50 engineers at Arup, we went from zero to participants independently using AI for their actual work. Forty-five minutes. The barrier was access and permission. Once both were there, people moved fast.

That speed is what makes the 84% number strategic, not depressing. If your team has started — even badly, even tentatively — you're already ahead of most of the market.

What the Early Movers Actually Get

The advantage isn't that your team knows a tool the competition doesn't. Copilot Chat is included with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription. A basic Microsoft 365 Copilot now provides standard access in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote at no add-on. The paid add-on works with your work data, including emails, files and meetings. The advantage is compounding skill. Someone who's been using AI for six months has developed an intuition for what to ask, how to evaluate output, when to push back on a bad result. That intuition doesn't transfer through a webinar. It builds through daily use.

The second advantage is cultural. The hardest part of AI adoption isn't the technology. It's normalizing experimentation. Organizations that start early build a culture where trying AI on a work task is expected, not risky. The ones that wait build a culture where AI is still "that thing IT blocked."

The Waiting Trap

The most common executive excuse I hear: "We're waiting until the tools are more mature." I heard the same thing about email in the late 90s, about cloud storage in 2010, about Slack in 2016. The tools are mature enough. The constraint is not technology.

I see that AI use in Hong Kong is not yet widespread. A team that builds it into their weekly workflow already has an advantage. I have seen Hong Kong staff learn as fast as people overseas.

Sources & Further Reading

  • Reuters Institute, "Digital News Report 2024" (Jun 2024) — Cross-country survey data on public AI tool usage, showing significant adoption gaps across demographics and regions.
  • McKinsey, "The State of AI in 2025" (Nov 2025) — 88% of organizations report using AI, yet scaling remains the gap between experimentation and embedded behavior change.
  • Microsoft & LinkedIn, "2024 Work Trend Index" (May 2024) — 75% of knowledge workers use AI at work, but 60% of leaders worry their organization lacks a plan to implement it.