White-collar workers are so overwhelmed with emails, web chats, and meetings that they are using AI tools to get their jobs done—even if their companies haven’t trained them to do so, according to a work trends index published Wednesday by Microsoft and LinkedIn. Seventy-five percent of people in desk jobs are already using AI at work, and the amount of people using AI has nearly doubled over the past six months, the report found. The vast majority of workers using AI—regardless of whether they are baby boomers or Gen Z—are “bringing their own AI tools” rather than waiting for their companies to guide them. “People are overwhelmed with digital debt and under duress at work,” Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft’s chatbot Copilot and cofounder of Workload, said in a video announcing the report’s results. “And they are turning to AI for relief.” Microsoft (which also owns LinkedIn) stands to win from the adoption of AI, and is already cashing in on its generative AI tools. The new report is built on a survey of …