Potential and risks of Artificial Intelligence in the workplace – Survey

The swift advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has sparked debates about their effectiveness and potential implications, especially concerning discrimination and bias.

While 62% of Americans believe AI will have a major impact on workers generally, just 28% believe its use in the workplace will have a major effect on them personally. https://t.co/ExpDNlOsWl pic.twitter.com/biMSX1AUln

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) April 20, 2023

While 62% of Americans believe AI will have a significant impact on workers within the next 20 years, only 28% think it will have a major effect on them personally.

While 56% of respondents expect AI to have a major impact on the US economy in the next 20 years, opinions on its benefits or harms are divided. Around a third (32%) think the benefits and harms will be equally distributed for workers, while 22% remain uncertain about its potential effects.

These findings, based on a survey of 11,004 U.S. adults conducted from December 12-18, 2022, provide insights into Americans’ views on AI’s role in hiring processes, employee monitoring, evaluations, and facial recognition in workplaces.

The study reveals that while there is potential for AI to improve some aspects of work, many Americans remain wary of its expanding influence.

The study did not specifically ask participants if they were worried about losing their jobs to AI, but several respondents expressed concerns about the potential for increased surveillance, data mismanagement, and misinterpretations in an AI-dominated workplace. In fact, 81% of those surveyed cited fears of being constantly monitored in a “Big Brother” fashion.

Furthermore, most Americans do not support using AI to monitor employees’ movements or desk attendance.

The use of AI in the hiring process is another topic of contention. The majority (71%) of respondents oppose using AI for making final hiring decisions, and most also disapprove of AI involvement in firing, job application review, and promotion decisions.

However, there are cases where respondents believe AI could outperform human decision-making. Almost half (47%) think AI would evaluate job applicants more fairly than humans, and among those who believe racial and ethnic bias is an issue in performance evaluations, many think that increased AI use could improve the hiring and evaluation process.

One participant argued that AI could not accurately assess a candidate’s character, stating, “AI can’t factor in the unquantifiable intangibles that make someone a good co-worker… or a bad co-worker. Personality traits like patience, compassion, and kindness would be overlooked or undervalued.”

However, opinions were not unanimous, as another respondent praised AI’s potential to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of a candidate’s skills and experience than a human hiring manager could.