Workers are wary — but also optimistic — about AI

As workplaces show increased enthusiasm for AI, staffers expect that the technology will have a major impact on their work lives.

Two recent surveys — one from Pew and the other from AI startup Scale AI — sought to gauge companies’ interest in AI as well as employees’ reactions to those plans and ambitions. The Pew report looked at responses from over 11,000 U.S. adults at a range of companies, while the Scale AI poll recruited 3,000 machine learning practitioners (e.g., people who work with AI tools but don’t necessarily build them) and executives.

The Scale AI survey results suggest spending on AI remains robust, with 72% of companies planning to “significantly” increase their AI investments every year over the next three years. Fifty-nine percent of those companies view AI as critical to their business in the next year, while 69% believe it’ll become critical in the next three years.

But what do workers think? It’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Asked about the potentially beneficial or harmful effects of AI in workplaces within the next two decades, about a third of Pew respondents said that they think the benefits and harms will be equally split while 22% weren’t sure about AI’s possible impact.

Workers were more resistant to some applications of AI versus others. Unsurprisingly, the majority opposed employers using AI to track staffers’ movements while they work, keeping track of when office workers are at their desks and recording exactly what people are doing on their work computers. Most (66%) also decried the use of AI in hiring decisions, which they fear removes the “personal touch” from the hiring process while introducing biases.

These views weren’t consistent across demographics, it’s worth noting.

For example, Americans with upper incomes responding to the Pew survey were more likely than those with middle or lower incomes to favor AI being used to review job applications. And men, on average, were more likely than women to think workplace security would be improved and company profits would go up with AI monitoring systems in place.

That’s not shocking, given the historical and present advantages afforded to wealthy men in the workforce.

A 2019 Georgetown Center report found that being born wealthy is a better indicator of adult success in the U.S. than academic performance. And in a UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences study, researchers found that women are on average 30% less likely to be called for a job interview than men with the same characteristics.

Fortunately for workers, companies aren’t necessarily looking to apply AI to their recruitment and hiring processes.

Scale AI reports that the vast majority of firms (89%) are adopting AI to develop new products or services, (78%) improve the customer experience and (78%) enhance the functionality of their existing products and services.

Many are investing in generative AI technologies, including text-, art- and speech-generating AI models. Scale reports that most of the companies it surveyed — 60% — are experimenting with generative models or plan on working with them in the next year.

What’s the worker response to the generative AI trend, considering the existential threat it poses (e.g., dystopian predictions of copywriters being replaced by bots)? Pew didn’t ask that question. But other studies have attempted to anticipate the impact on the workforce. The level of optimism — or pessimism — varies by the source.

Goldman Sachs recently said that as many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by generative AI, with the effects felt more deeply in advanced economies than emerging markets. On the other end, a study by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and MIT found that access to generative AI-powered assistants can increase worker productivity, with the biggest impact on less experience workers. 

So what’s a staffer to make of that? According to Pew, workers are generally wary of what AI could mean for them personally in the workplace.

At a personal level, 38% of people responding to the Pew survey said that they’re not sure what the outcome of AI use in workplaces will be for them. Three in 10 say the use of AI in these places will even out — in other words, the help and the hurt will be equal (eventually). Some 16% of adults think they themselves will be more helped than hurt by workplace AI, and 15% believe they themselves will be more hurt than helped.

Only time will tell, perhaps.

Worker worries aside, startups are already deep in the weeds with generative AI projects, TechCrunch has reported. For example, Adthos is using generative AI to completely automate audio ads, while Tavus is tapping generative AI to power personalized videos with voice and face cloning.

According to a PitchBook report released this month, VCs have steadily increased their positions in generative AI, from $408 million in 2018 to $4.8 billion in 2021 to $4.5 billion in 2022. Big Tech has an appetite for the tech, too, with companies like Salesforce pledging hundreds of millions of dollars toward generative AI startups.