3 hours Employees see benefits of AI and automation but want their bosses to prioritize upskilling: MIT study Fast Company
Is AI going to take your job? Getting replaced by automation may be a common fear for many employees, but perhaps surprisingly, many also see the potential benefits—and they feel it may benefit them in the long run.
That’s a key takeaway from the preprint of a new paper and survey from MIT, which finds that 60% of workers who work with robotics and AI think they’ll see positive career impacts as a result in terms of productivity, satisfaction, and job safety.
The survey included responses from more than 9,200 workers (around 80% of them in office jobs) in nine countries in Europe, as well as the United States and Australia. The survey was designed by MIT’s team, but funded by Amazon and conducted by Ipsos. The paper itself was produced independently by MIT.
“This paper finds that more workers report potential benefits from new technologies like robots and AI for their safety and comfort at work, their pay, and their autonomy on the job than report potential costs,” it reads. “Workers with jobs that ask them to solve complex problems, workers that feel valued by their employers, and workers who are motivated to move up in their careers are all more likely to see new technologies as beneficial.”
Americans are still skeptical about AI benefits
Among the other interesting findings in the paper is that Americans ranked lowest in terms of trusting AI (only 28% say they found it helpful to their everyday lives). At the same time, more than 60% of American workers think that employers should work to upskill their employees with new technology, while 46% of workers overall want employers to adopt tools that can automate mundane tasks.
Note, that is tasks, not occupations.
“Our goal in this study was to understand how workers think about technological change—and what factors might make workers more or less open to using technology to make their jobs better,” said Ben Armstrong, executive director of MIT’s Industrial Performance Center, in a statement provided to Fast Company.
“What surprised us was how optimistic workers are about the impact of automation on their safety and comfort, as well as their ability to move up in their careers,” he added. “A key takeaway from this research is that employees who are happy at work and feel that their employer invests in them—as well as employees who are motivated to learn—are also the employees who see the most potential benefits of automation for their jobs.”
The paper provides more evidence that the impact of AI tools in the workplace will be more complex than anticipated. While many workers may (rightfully) expect that employers will try to replace them with automation tools, a good number of workers also evidently feel that they stand to see tangible benefits from the adoption of those tools.
Ultimately, the data suggests that the workers who are prioritizing upward mobility—perhaps by embracing and utilizing AI and related tools to augment their own performances—will reap the most benefits.