Is AI the most rapidly adopted technology ever? Many Kansans would (correctly) say yes
We have lost track of how quickly AI is being adopted, writes Eric Thomas. (Photo by Seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Getty Images)
For the past few months, I have been collecting personal anecdotes and news stories about how casually and quickly Kansas — and the world — has been adopting artificial technology.
The research papers we assign ChatGPT to write. The spreadsheet formulas we delegate to Copilot. The internet searches that Gemini wrestles away from old-school Google. The vacations that we allow Claude to plan.
Taking advantage of the billions of smartphones in our pockets, the millions of computers on our desks and the robust internet, artificial intelligence has spread astoundingly since it was introduced as a consumer product in late 2022.
As someone who teaches media history, I am convinced that artificial intelligence is the fastest growing technology we have ever seen. At least one Kansas historian agrees with me.
“I feel safe in saying that (artificial intelligence) is the fastest technology that the state has seen,” Sean Seyer, associate professor of technology history at the University of Kansas, told me during a recent interview.
What significance should we pin to AI’s rapid growth over the past few years?
While the pace of artificial intelligence is significantly faster than all previous technology, AI’s surge into our daily lives also can feel wildly different, based on where we work, where we live and with whom we live.
A matter of geography
During the first quarter of 2026, Microsoft measured AI adoption across the country. It found a few striking things in Kansas. Some of these insights apply nationwide.
Kansas ranked second in the Midwest in AI use, behind Illinois. Nationwide, Kansas was right in the middle at No. 25. In those ways, Kansas feels quite AI-normal.
However, Douglas County, where I work at the University of Kansas, ranked 8th as a county nationwide in its use of artificial intelligence, according to the study. In the county, which is also home to the city of Lawrence, Microsoft found a whopping 57.2% user share, defined as “the proportion of a relevant population actively using AI tools.”
Put in context, this percentage puts Douglas County in the top 0.25% of counties nationwide.
AI, within four years, emerged from essentially nonexistent to more than 50% of a county regularly using it — in Kansas. Just from that, AI stands alone.
Granted, Douglas County’s user share is radically different from other parts of the state.
A wide majority of Kansas counties have usage shares that are less than half of Douglas County. Startlingly, even Sedgwick County, which contains Wichita, has a user share less than half of Douglas County’s.
Nationwide, counties with major universities lead AI use. On Microsoft’s list, the top 15 counties — from Utah to Virginia, from Idaho to Georgia — all feature college towns.
Microsoft’s study reassures us that it’s not all schoolwork (or cheating on it) that drives up AI use in these college-town counties: “AI use among young adults is not limited to schoolwork. Surveys show that adults under 30 use AI for a wide range of tasks, including information search, brainstorming, work, email writing, image generation, and entertainment.”
While not as extreme as Douglas County, my home county ranks in the top three in Kansas. Johnson County has a user share of 36.5%, still more than double many Kansas counties.
Microsoft has an explanation for this as well.
“AI usage is significantly concentrated around large metropolitan areas,” the study states.
Add in my household profile. My wife (an insurance executive) and my daughter (a graphic designer) both work in industries that have broadly embraced AI, according to the study. AI use is more common for people working in professional and technical services (check!), company management (check!), healthcare (check!) and information and media (check!).
(Folks who relatively shy away from AI? Those working in agriculture, natural resources, construction and goods production.)
Finally, Microsoft says that living with my kids this summer (both of them 21 or younger) makes me more likely to be surrounded by AI: “Young adults are adopting AI faster than other age groups.”
No wonder I am sensing the quick spread of AI.
A matter of history
Crowning AI as the fastest-growing technology ever means considering previous inventions.
When I teach the history of media to University of Kansas students, we discuss the key inventions of communication, starting with the printing press. It’s mostly a chronological tour: photography, the telegraph, the telephone, motion pictures, radio broadcasts, television, the internet and social media.
One of my goals during lecture is to describe the effects of each invention — and how quickly they were adopted. For instance, the telegraph changed the way that journalists wrote (essentials first, details later). However, the impact of the telegraph relied on 19th century folks building a sprawling network of physical wires through burgeoning American cities and across a knotty frontier.
It took a while.
This was especially true in places like Kansas, where rural living meant that new technology, like the telephone, took longer to reach you. Miles of telephone line, a huge investment, was needed to connect one new farm family.
So too for the adoption of other media inventions. For years, if not decades, many American households didn’t own a television, let alone live close enough to receive a clear broadcast signal.
Even the internet, a modern invention, took a decade to go from a fledgling consumer product to being widely used. America Online went public as an internet company in 1992, but it took until 2001 for just more than 50% of American households to have internet. The federal government is still providing grants for broadband internet for rural Kansas, even as the satellite internet promises to make it obsolete.
Compare this to our past few years with artificial intelligence.
Since November 2022 when ChatGPT burst into the news, we have been rapidly — choose your verb here — swamped or drowned or elevated by artificial intelligence.
Perhaps you see an AI apocalypse or an AI vacation in your future.
Regardless, as we decide whether AI is either delightfully good or existentially bad for us, we have lost track of the speed of AI’s adoption. That speed, without any practical restrictions from government or the market, has found few limits besides our capacity to construct data centers and build computing power.
A true historian weighs in
At KU, Seyer’s work focuses especially on technology, so he nominated a few other inventions as having a rapid and profound cultural impact in Kansas: aviation, railroads, the grain elevator, the automobile, the domestication of electricity and the internet.
The rapid dispersion of AI has been helped dramatically by established electrical and broadband networks, which Seyer calls “foundational.”
“AI is actually something that’s layered on top of other foundational systems, and those foundational systems are so widespread, which is what has allowed AI to be spread so widespread so quickly,” Seyer said. “Because it’s piggybacking onto these foundational systems that have already existed.”
Earlier technologies walked so that artificial intelligence could run — if not sprint.
This new AI sprint speed of adoption scares me.
In the past, when a culture heedlessly has said yes to the next new thing, we collectively have had time — often decades — to hit the brakes, swerve or pull a U-turn. When will we find time to regulate AI?
“Proactive regulation,” according to Seyer, doesn’t happen.
“The only thing I’m concerned about is that regulation tends to be reactive and usually reacts to tragedy and crises,” Seyer said. “That’s what I’m wondering. What is that going to look like in this case in order to prompt that sort of regulatory reaction?”
During our conversation, Seyer sensed my fear about AI’s ascent but offered optimism.
“There’s a fear that it’s happening so fast, so I can’t make sense of it,” Seyer said. “But to me that’s exactly why we need to make sense of it. That should be the impetus to try to figure it out.”