Why AI Lands Differently for the ADHD Brain
Neurodivergent professionals are 55% more likely to use AI — and they love it. No shit. Also, vindicated!
Hey y’all,
Two independent surveys, different methodologies, different geography, same population finding.
EY’s Global Neuroinclusion at Work Study 2025
Surveyed over 2,000 professionals across 22 countries and 8 sectors. It reports that 79% of neurodivergent professionals already use AI at work and are 55% more likely to use AI than their neurotypical colleagues.
The Understood 2026 Neurodiversity at Work Survey
Run by The Harris Poll across 2,073 U.S. adults, found 78% of neurodivergent employees use AI tools versus 59% of neurotypical employees.
If you’re an ADHD adult who started using AI in the last two years and felt something land — something specific, something that wasn’t there before, something you didn’t have a word for — those numbers are naming a population. The thing you felt is felt by most people whose brains work like yours and mine.
Here’s what I think is happening underneath the numbers.
1. AI is async.
The EY survey reports 71% of neurodivergent users find AI very or extremely effective at facilitating asynchronous working practices. You write when you’re ready. The meeting doesn’t have to have started. The room doesn’t have to be ready. Nobody’s emotional state has to be navigated while you think out loud. Async is the format the ADHD brain has always wanted.
2. The social cost of asking drops to zero.
You can ask the dumb question, ask the same question four ways, change your mind, come back tomorrow and ask the same thing again because you forgot. No friend with a face is wondering why you keep asking. Lowering the social cost of asking is lowering one of the most exhausting taxes ADHD adults pay all day.
3. Revision becomes free.
EY’s earlier collaboration with Microsoft found 80% of neurodivergent users report AI improves their written communication. You can rewrite the draft fourteen times; the fourteenth time, the AI is just as engaged as the first. If you ask a human to read multiple drafts, by draft three, they’re gently and reasonably done with you. Infinite patience matters because perfectionism without infinite patience is a stalemate, and ADHD adults often live inside that stalemate.
4. The system holds the context for you.
The same EY/Microsoft work found that 59% of neurodivergent users report AI improves memory and recall. You don’t have to remember what you said yesterday or re-establish the thread. You can come back to the project after a week of focus drift, and the model will still have everything that was true a week ago. AI lowers the mental-load tax of “where was I” is the tax that ADHD makes the heaviest.
5. And it is a tireless first-draft partner.
AI’s advantage is stamina — it will write a hundred drafts to your one. The bottleneck for a lot of ADHD adults is getting started; the blank page is the enemy. A first draft generated in thirty seconds, that you can edit into something good, functions as an accommodation. The accommodation isn’t being marketed that way, but it’s how it works.
I want to be careful not to over-claim. AI does not fix executive function. It does not fix the cost of sustained focus or the social masking that exhausts neurodivergent adults by 2pm.
EY’s data is sobering on the bigger picture — only 25% of neurodivergent professionals feel truly included at work today, and the AI numbers don’t change that. The tool is still just a tool. The neurodivergent adults using it are still neurodivergent adults the next morning, and the workplaces they walk into still have the rest of the work of becoming inclusive to do.
But the gap between “I could not do this work” and “I could do this work” is meaningful. And that gap is being closed faster for adults with ADHD than for the general workforce, because the design of the tool happens to fit the shape of the brain.
A question for you:
What’s the first thing AI gave you back?
— Rachel
P.S. — Both reports are public. Search “EY Global Neuroinclusion at Work Study 2025” on ey.com and “Understood 2026 Neurodiversity at Work Survey” on understood.org/work. The agreement between two independent surveys is the part of this that surprised me most.
