Claim LD08-SL-C21 (v1.0)

A study of ChatGPT use co-written by OpenAI staff reports that ChatGPT had been adopted by around 10% of the world’s adult population by July 2025 and that non-work messages grew from 53% to more than 70% of use, from conversations classified by a privacy-preserving automated pipeline; the code is “available on request.”

Provenance and status

Claim type: ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status: ELIGIBLE (SOURCE_POSITION) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH SOURCE-POSITION QUALIFIER”)
Verification state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (ABSTRACT_ONLY) (as printed: “CONTENT VERIFIED ABSTRACT”; verified by: UNKNOWN)
Does not license: A description of AI use outside ChatGPT, or of business and API use
Source (field 6, as printed): Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, “How People Use ChatGPT,” NBER Working Paper 34255, 2025
Source type (field 7): WORKING_PAPER (as printed: “Academic working paper”)
Institutional position: AI developer co-authored (at least two of seven authors disclose that they are OpenAI employees; one is a Harvard economist)
Maturity (claim evidence / publication maturity): EMERGING (as printed: “EMERGING”)
Recorded date: 2026-10-16
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern relation is recorded on its Sources.

Version

Pinned version v1.0 (entry LD08-SL-C21--v1.0) — this page never floats to newer evidence.

This pinned version is also the current version.

Versions:v1.0 · current

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, “How People Use ChatGPT,” NBER Working Paper 34255, 2025” → SRC-SL-CHATTERJI-ET-AL-NBER-W34255--v1.0 — Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, “How People Use ChatGPT,” NBER Working Paper 34255, 2025; class WORKING_PAPER (explicit public provenance pin)

All 25 canonical Claim fields (raw values and normalized values)

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD08-SL-C21	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	A study of ChatGPT use co-written by OpenAI staff reports that ChatGPT had been adopted by around 10% of the world’s adult population by July 2025 and that non-work messages grew from 53% to more than 70% of use, from conversations classified by a privacy-preserving automated pipeline; the code is “available on request.”	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	B — Data and access	—
5	MATURITY	EMERGING	states: EMERGING
6	SOURCE	Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, “How People Use ChatGPT,” NBER Working Paper 34255, 2025	source_ids: SRC-SL-CHATTERJI-ET-AL-NBER-W34255
7	SOURCE TYPE	Academic working paper	classes: WORKING_PAPER
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	AI developer co-authored (at least two of seven authors disclose that they are OpenAI employees; one is a Harvard economist)	—
9	SCOPE	ChatGPT consumer plans, November 2022 to July 2025	—
10	DESIGN	Automated classification of a sample of conversations	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	A representative sample of ChatGPT conversations (size not read)	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	Automated classification pipeline inside OpenAI (details not read)	—
13	COMPARATOR	Not applicable	—
14	MAIN RESULT	About 10% of the world’s adults by July 2025; non-work share 53% to more than 70%; practical guidance, seeking information and writing nearly 80% of conversations; programming a relatively small share	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	What people use one developer’s chatbot for	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	A description of AI use outside ChatGPT, or of business and API use	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED ABSTRACT	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: ABSTRACT_ONLY · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Only the NBER abstract and disclosure page were read; the full paper and its validation were not; data access terms beyond code on request are not stated there	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	Independent logs give a different work share: LD08-SL-C22	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	Global platform / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Reports higher growth in lower-income countries	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-08, D3, D2	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Full text with validation details, or independent data on the same population	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH SOURCE-POSITION QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: SOURCE_POSITION
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-16	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-08 (LIVING_DEBATE); D3 (DOMAIN); D2 (DOMAIN)

Cited by Living Debate versions

LD-08 v0.1

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 be022c18802f319d457ad0e1107df15099560cba40ef154f2693607891fa95f4.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD08-SL-C21 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-16; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-08 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-08 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 21 — LD08-SL-C21” SHA-256 2e74881df7bf05dfef13b0af08474249604b045d26ad84886760d38be41bac63; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD08-SL-C21--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD08-SL-C21 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-08 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD08-SL-C21 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-16); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-08 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-08 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-CHATTERJI-ET-AL-NBER-W34255--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 21 — LD08-SL-C21 cites "Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, “How People Use ChatGPT,” NBER Working Paper 34255, 2025"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-CHATTERJI-ET-AL-NBER-W34255--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, “How People Use ChatGPT,” NBER Working Paper 34255, 2025".