Execs and employees don’t see generative AI the same way

Anyone who has ever moved, welcomed someone new into their life, or changed jobs (so, everyone…) knows that change can elicit feelings of both excitement and fear.

So, it might not come as a surprise to know that while execs are excited about ChatGPT and other AI tools, their employees are more fearful, according to a new Qualtrics survey.

While 64% of executives said the prospect of AI is exciting, only 39% of their employees feel the same. Some 46% of individual contributors surveyed by the experience management firm reported that AI is “scary,” compared to 30% of top brass.

“Executives are just a lot more excited about it,” said Benjamin Granger, Qualtrics’s chief workplace psychologist. “That’s not really surprising…To a lot of people, this is an unknown. Unknowns are scary…Is this going to replace my job? Is this going to replace part of my job? Is this going to make me redundant?”

It’s possible for HR to nurture both at the same time as companies incorporate new AI tech into day-to-day business operations.

“HR, in my mind, is in a very unique position in that they are the stewards of the business,” Granger said. “They understand the need for efficiency. They understand the power of artificial intelligence…But on the flip side, being the stewards of the business and the people, they also understand where human intelligence is essential.”

Guidance, not policy. Granger said HR teams shouldn’t rush to create an AI policy before all the business and people implications are clear, but did recommend developing guidance.

“Guidance and a framework is absolutely necessary,” he said, adding that there could be “a high risk of leaders misusing it,” even unintentionally.

Communicate change. This lack of clarity about the impacts of new, AI-based tools could be contributing to the disparate views on them.

“People are not very good at dealing with uncertainty,” he said. “When there’s uncertainty and people don’t know what’s going to happen, they start to create stories and they start to ruminate. And if that goes unchecked…and it’s not clear, it’s going to become people’s reality,” Granger said

If employees don’t hear from HR how the company is navigating the shift, they may leave. It’s a dynamic we’ve seen before, and will see again, he said.

“This proliferation of AI, this is not the last time we’re going to see something like this introduced into the workplace to disrupt and, and create change,” Granger said. “How dramatic is it going to be? Whose jobs is it going to take? What is it going to automate? There’s still a lot of unknowns about that, and I think the unknown is likely what’s burdening people.”