As AI technology becomes a more common presence in the workplace, conversation is shifting towards how man and machine will work together.  I’ve written in the past about various studies exploring how workers feel about their new technological colleagues, and far from the dystopian pictures of many newspaper headlines, most seem quite optimistic about things.

For instance, the majority thought that technology will not only make jobs easier, it will also take away many of the mundane tasks we have to perform, thus freeing us up for more enjoyable work. What’s more, in terms of job displacement, 65% of respondents thought that technology had increased the number of jobs available, with the majority believing this trend will continue into the future.

Having an AI boss

A recent survey undertaken by Oracle and Future Workplace, suggests that this is even the case if the machine is our manager.  Their study of 1,320 U.S. based workers found that people are generally welcoming of AI technology into their workplace, but they do not feel that their organizations are doing enough to embrace the technology.

This was typified by a quite noticeable gap between how people use AI at home and at work.  For some time there has been a lag between technologies readily deployed by employees in their personal lives and the slow pace of change in the workplace, but AI has accentuated this phenomenon.  Some 70% of respondents said they use AI in some way in their personal lives, but just 6% did so at work.

In the next three years, respondents expect the benefits to include:

• Employees believe that AI will improve operational efficiencies (59 percent), enable faster decision making (50 percent), significantly reduce cost (45 percent), enable better customer experiences (40 percent) and improve the employee experience (37 percent).
• HR leaders believe AI will positively impact learning and development (27 percent), performance management (26 percent), compensation/payroll (18 percent) and recruiting and employee benefits (13 percent).

There is less confidence however in the ability of organizations to capitalize on the opportunities presented by AI to transform how businesses function.  The vast majority of respondents had serious doubts in their ability to successfully adapt to the changes required by AI given the daily pressures they face.  What’s more, 72% of respondents said that their organizations are not providing any kind of AI training at the moment, despite a clear demand among the workforce.

Indeed, far from being concerned about AI taking their jobs, most respondents were more concerned about their organizations falling behind.  It is this failure to adopt the latest technologies that they fear will impact their work most of all.

“As this study shows, people are not afraid of AI taking their jobs and instead want to be able to quickly and easily take advantage of the latest innovations,” the authors say. “To help employees embrace AI, organizations should partner with their HR leaders to address the skill gap and focus their IT strategy on embedding simple and powerful AI innovations into existing business processes.”