American workers are skeptical AI will help them on the job

More than two years after ChatGPT’s public debut kicked off an artificial intelligence mania, the American workforce largely is unenthusiastic about AI on the job and not finding much use for the technology.

About 80% of Americans generally don’t use AI at work, and the ones who do aren’t bowled over by its benefits, according to the Pew Research Center’s first in-depth survey of AI in the workplace released Tuesday.

Workers also aren’t optimistic about AI at work. Fewer than one-third of the Pew survey participants said they’re “excited” about the use of AI in future workplaces, and just 6% believe AI will lead to more job opportunities for them in the long term.

Pew didn’t ask why respondents felt this way. But the data adds to prior evidence of Americans’ pessimism about and middling use of AI, which is at odds with Silicon Valley’s embrace of the technology as a profound catalyst for work and our lives.

A whole lot of meh about AI

When offered multiple choices for their feelings about how AI might be used in future workplaces, far more workers answered “worried,” at 52% of respondents, than “hopeful” or “excited,” at 36% and 29%, respectively, according to Pew.

And few workers, only about 16%, are using AI at least some of the time at work. Among workers who said they did use AI chatbots at work, a minority said those technologies were very or extremely helpful in letting them work more quickly or at a higher quality.

The Pew survey, conducted in October among about 5,300 Americans with full-time or part-time jobs, also found demographic differences in AI use and attitudes.

Workers under 50 years old were more likely to say they use chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini at least a few times a month at work. The younger workers and those with higher incomes expressed excitement about AI at work at higher rates.

But generally “the feeling of worry tends to cut across the demographic groups,” said Luona Lin, a Pew research associate who worked on the AI analysis.

The prevailing attitude among American workers shows that AI optimists and businesses embracing the technology may need to do more if they want workers to buy into AI’s benefits.

Why workers are pessimistic about AI

Hatim Rahman, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, offered two explanations for workers’ apparent AI pessimism.

First, business leaders haven’t effectively explained to employees how AI could help them. Many workers have filled the communications gap by focusing on predictions of jobs being replaced en masse by software.

“In absence of the clear vision of increasing productivity (with AI), people are legitimately scared that the organization may justify laying them off by saying AI can do this job,” said Rahman, who studies AI effects on work.

Second, employees generally have a “fraught” relationship with their company leaders right now, he said. The combination of technology change and lack of trust in their bosses has made workers anxious that AI will do more harm than good in their jobs.

Rahman predicted that workers’ attitudes about AI will become more polarized.

People with power over their working conditions, like doctors and lawyers with their own practices, may feel good about AI helping them off-load rote tasks. Those with less autonomy, such as early-career software developers and customer service workers, might grow more dejected about AI if they see it wipe out jobs.

“There are going to be some who have more power, and they’re going to be the ones who figure out how to use it,” Rahman said. “Those with less power are going to be at the whims of the market.”