U.S. Workers Are Anxious About AI Use in Finance and Operations, New Survey Shows
Driven by negative news coverage, salaried workers’ concerns over job loss, business fraud, and other potential adverse effects of AI in the workplace significantly outweigh their enthusiasm for its potential benefits.
Purpose of the Study
It’s hard to escape the prevailing narrative about artificial intelligence (AI) in news coverage and public discourse. Conversations and anecdotes quickly turn negative and stories spotlighting the adverse outcomes of AI spread like wildfire.
Historically, breakthroughs in technology have often been met with apprehension; tales of misuse in the hands of bad actors can quickly dominate the public imagination. Although caution is warranted, how much do these fears inhibit progress? In the case of AI, the same AI advancements causing widespread fear are also being used to achieve unprecedented outcomes and propel society forward. Could elevating those positive stories accelerate progress?
The cloud-based E-invoicing and Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) automation solution Yooz recently explored this topic with the third-party survey platform Pollfish. The 2024 Yooz Survey: AI in the Workplace was conducted on Feb. 20 by Pollfish, surveying 600 U.S. professionals over the age of 18. The respondents were salaried workers with annual household incomes of at least $50,000, representing industries including construction, manufacturing, automotive, retail, restaurant, healthcare, finance and insurance.
Key Findings
Widespread apprehensions among U.S. workers regarding the negative impacts of artificial intelligence are impeding the broader adoption of beneficial AI advancements. From fears of job displacement to concerns about business fraud and biased decision-making, the findings underscore a significant barrier to embracing AI across industries. Respondents expressed particular concerns about AI’s use in business finance and operations, presenting a challenge for FinTech firms seeking acceptance and trust in AI-driven solutions.
- Fear outweighs excitement for AI, with nearly three times as many respondents viewing AI with apprehension than enthusiasm.
- Job displacement concerns are prominent, with many anticipating a negative impact on jobs with minimal creation of new jobs.
- Negative news about AI is frequently encountered by respondents, creating the perception of media overwhelmingly biased against AI.
- The construction industry leads in AI resistance, reflecting sector-specific challenges in embracing technology.
- Fears about AI extend to business operations and finance, with respondents concerned about AI replacing human judgment in financial decisions, creating new vulnerabilities that could lead to business fraud, introducing new forms of bias in hiring, and increasing liability risk for employers with the rise of AI-driven fraud.
Unraveling the Tapestry of Fears
Yooz’s survey results reveal considerable anxiety clouding public perception of AI, primarily fueled by negative news coverage.
When asked about how people feel about AI, nearly three times as many respondents said “people are more fearful than excited about AI” (38%) than said “people are more excited than fearful about AI” (13%), with 45% saying “people are equally fearful and excited about AI” and 4% saying they were not sure.
This was particularly pronounced among Gen X respondents, with nearly half (47%) of respondents saying people are more fearful than excited. But, younger generations bring a glimmer of hope and optimism, with 22% of Gen Z and 19% of Millennial respondents saying people are more excited than fearful about AI–a staggeringly high percentage compared to the 7% of Gen X or 5% of Baby Boomers who say the same.
When asked about the impact of more businesses using AI, more than twice of respondents (41%) anticipate that it will primarily eliminate jobs, with only 18% seeing opportunity for new job opportunities in different fields, echoing long-standing and widely debated fears about automation and its impact on employment. Only 8% think it will have a minimal impact on overall employment.
Unraveling the Tapestry of Fears
When asked how frequently they encounter news stories or information online discussing potential risks or negative consequences of AI, nearly half (47%) of respondents reported encountering them “often” or “very often,” with an additional 36% encountering them “sometimes” and only 17% encountering them “rarely” or “never.”
Over half (51%) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that “news stories about artificial intelligence tend to highlight risks or negative consequences more than its benefits,” while only 23% disagreed or strongly disagreed with that statement. Baby Boomers had the strongest opinions on the topic, with 57% agreeing with the statement and only 12% disagreeing.
Not only do individuals notice these negative stories, but they discuss and share more extensively. When presented with a fictional scenario of a news story about an AI-powered vehicle traffic management system failing and causing urban gridlock and car accidents, along with a separate news story of an AI-powered financial detection system preventing a bank from being robbed, only 19% said they’d talk about the positive use of AI. But, twice as many–38%– respondents said they’d talk about the negative use of AI.
Construction Leads in AI Resistance
Insights from the survey illuminate deep divides in AI adoption across various industries, pinpointing clear laggards. When offered a choice among 10 industries, both respondents overall and those specifically within the construction sector arrived at the same conclusion: the construction industry exhibited the highest resistance to embracing AI advancements.
Respondents in the construction industry also had higher levels of awareness of examples of negative uses of AI–such as phishing, identity theft, document forgery or transaction fraud–with 62% of respondents in the construction industry saying they’re familiar with these uses, in contrast to only 57% of respondents overall.
For sectors like construction, bridging the knowledge gap and addressing misconceptions about AI could pave the way for wider acceptance and integration, unlocking new opportunities for efficiency and innovation.
AI Fears Abound in Business Finance and Operations
In the areas of business operations and finance specifically, respondents expressed concerns about AI replacing human judgment across these functions, as well as the potential use of AI by external sources to attack these functions.
Fully 92% of respondents said they had concerns about businesses using AI for “financial decision-making processes like loan approvals,” with most worried about the “loss of human judgment and oversight in critical financial decisions” (62%), and many expressing concerns about “lack of transparency in how AI makes decisions” (46%) and “potential bias in AI algorithms” (45%).
When asked about the potential impact of AI on fraud, about half (49%) of respondents expressed concern that AI could lead to new forms of business fraud that could pose “a significant threat to companies,” whereas only 25% said they were not concerned because they expected AI to “lead to better anti-fraud detection and prevention.”
Respondents had concerns about the potential for bias. 29% said that if AI was used in a company’s hiring process and was determined to exhibit unintentional bias against certain demographics, the company should “scrap the AI system entirely and revert to traditional hiring methods,” while 53% were willing to “retrain the AI with a more diverse dataset to remove biases,” and 18% responded “neither; not sure.”
AI also introduces many new legal risks and liabilities for employers, a theme that came through strongly in the survey results. Respondents expressed concern over fraudsters using AI to target them through their work emails, with 56% saying their employer should be “held liable for losses incurred” and that their employer “has a duty to protect their employees” from such attacks.
Conclusion
In the dance of innovation and apprehension, the narrative surrounding AI often veers towards fear, propelled by stories of misuse and negative outcomes. Yet, hidden within these tales of caution lies a powerful truth: the same groundbreaking technologies sparking fear are simultaneously being wielded as tools for good, combating the very issues that incite apprehension. By shifting the focus to these transformative efforts, we can nurture a balanced understanding and appreciation of AI's potential, reminding others that for every shadow cast by technology, there exists a light of innovation ready to dispel it.
"AI's transformative potential is undeniable, yet our survey underscores a critical reality: worker apprehensions regarding its negative implications are hindering the widespread adoption of AI innovations. From fears of job displacement to concerns about biased decision-making, it's evident that addressing these concerns is paramount for fostering a climate of trust and advancing AI's positive contributions to our society and economy," stated Laurent Charpentier, CEO of Yooz.
Charpentier emphasized the significance of addressing these concerns: "The reticence towards AI presents a challenge for FinTech and other business technologies. It's crucial for companies to share positive stories that showcase AI's potential for a positive future in finance and operations.”
