What the Best AI Users Do Differently—and How to Level Up All of Your Employees

by Nick Hallman, Zach Kowaleski, Anu Puvvada and Jaime J. Schmidt

March 19, 2026

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Summary.

Organizations have moved quickly to put AI tools in the hands of their employees. But for all of this investment, many leaders struggle to assess how it’s going. Is AI measurably improving the quality, speed, and ambition of people’s work? Is it strengthening professional judgment? Who is succeeding with it, and why? What does successful use even look like?

Nick Hallman is an associate professor in the Shulkin Department of Accounting and the Senior Scholar for AI Initiatives at the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses primarily on auditors and other information intermediaries in financial markets.

Zach Kowaleski is an assistant professor in the Shulkin Department of Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin. Kowaleski was previously on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame and an Economic Research Fellow at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. His research looks at the effect of the institutional setting on behavior using the audit and broker-dealer settings.

Anu Puvvada leads KPMG Studio, where she combines forward-looking research with venture-building to identify emerging opportunities and launch scalable services and technology-enabled businesses.

Jaime J. Schmidt is a professor in the Shulkin Department of Accounting in the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also an associate editor at Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory and the executive director of the C. Aubrey Smith Center for Auditing Education and Research. Among other goals, the Center seeks to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners.

Read more on Generative AI or related topics AI and machine learning, Technology and analytics, Analytics and data science, Performance indicators and Employee performance management

What the Best AI Users Do Differently—and How to Level Up All of Your Employees

Summary.

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