Tarot, Fan Fiction, and Work Buddies: How People Really Use AI in 2026
Every so often we check in on how people are really using AI — and Harvard Business Review just dropped its 2026 report, so we do a full top-10 countdown.
Some entries are no surprise (therapy and companionship holds at #1, work buddy, troubleshooting), and some genuinely shocked us: astrology and tarot at #9, fan fiction and storytelling at #4, autonomous agentic operations debuting at #6.
We dig into what's new, what fell off the list (learning and education didn't crack the top 10), the "think slop" phenomenon, and how the two of us actually use AI — from editing and needs assessments to…
The skinny
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