Top-Level Concerns Over AI-Powered Devices
Balancing Innovation With Caution
Employees across the generations share the same top concerns about AI devices: security risks (52%) and privacy violations (48%). The ethical dimension of these devices also weighs heavily on close to half of employees (45%). They worry about blurring the line of separation between content that looks anthropogenic but was created through artificial means. 43% express concern for job loss, again underscoring the importance of training and education of AI as a human copilot, not a replacement.
Concern is highest with the seasoned workforce: 62% of Gen X/Boomers/Seniors underscore security risks, higher than Gen Z’s 51% and Millennials’ 43%. Privacy issues are also felt more acutely by the oldest demographic. Experience, in turn, plays a significant role in shaping threat perception.
This data underscores the importance of a strategy that prioritizes clear communication, stringent security protocols and an educational component to demystify AI’s increasingly prominent role in the workplace. Getting the most out these innovations means proactively mitigating concerns through informed AI-powered device usage.
Despite existing popularity of AI-powered assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant, 40% of employees say the risk of listening voice assistants embedded into work devices is their top personal concern about AI-powered devices. Contrary to widely reported belief, the fear that AI will render their own job obsolete came in second place (33%).
Younger workers voice greater anxiety over job displacement and may have a heightened sensitivity to AI’s transformative potential. This contrasts with a less pronounced concern among older colleagues that have witnessed (and survived) arguably the most significant technological innovations in human history — the least of which being the mass distribution of personal computers.
Despite unease about AI usurping human workers, worries about using the technology or disruptions during the learning phase are underrepresented in our findings. This points to a workforce aware of the stakes yet open to embracing AI’s emerging role in the modern workplace.
#1 Personal concern
AI eavesdropping(Voice assistant technology in work devices)
