It is the work shortcut that dare not speak its name. A third of people do not tell their bosses about their use of AI tools amid fears their ability will be questioned if they do.
Research for the Guardian has revealed that only 13% of UK adults openly discuss their use of AI with senior staff at work and close to half think of it as a tool to help people who are not very good at their jobs to get by.
Amid widespread predictions that many workers face a fight for their jobs with AI, polling by Ipsos found that among more than 1,500 British workers aged 16 to 75, 33% said they did not discuss their use of AI to help them at work with bosses or other more senior colleagues. They were less coy with people at the same level, but a quarter of people believe “co-workers will question my ability to perform my role if I share how I use AI”.
The Guardian’s survey also uncovered deep worries about the advance of AI, with more than half of those surveyed believing it threatens the social structure. The number of people believing it has a positive effect is outweighed by those who think it does not. It also found 63% of people do not believe AI is a good substitute for human interaction, while 17% think it is.
Next week’s state visit to the UK by Donald Trump is expected to signal greater collaboration between the UK and Silicon Valley to make Britain an important centre of AI development.
The US president is expected to be joined by Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI who has signed a memorandum of understanding with the UK government to explore the deployment of advanced AI models in areas including justice, security and education. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chip maker Nvidia, is also expected to announce an investment in the UK’s biggest datacentre yet, to be built near Blyth in Northumbria.
Keir Starmer has said he wants to “mainline AI into the veins” of the UK. Silicon Valley companies are aggressively marketing their AI systems as capable of cutting grunt work and liberating creativity.
The polling appears to reflect workers’ uncertainty about how bosses want AI tools to be used, with many employers not offering clear guidance. There is also fear of stigma among colleagues if workers are seen to rely too heavily on the bots.
A separate US study circulated this week found that medical doctors who use AI in decision-making are viewed by their peers as significantly less capable. Ironically, the doctors who took part in the research by Johns Hopkins Carey Business School recognised AI as beneficial for enhancing precision, but took a negative view when others were using it.
Gaia Marcus, the director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent AI research body, said the large minority of people who did not talk about AI use with their bosses illustrated the “potential for a large trust gap to emerge between government’s appetite for economy-wide AI adoption and the public sense that AI might not be beneficial to them or to the fabric of society”.
“We need more evaluation of the impact of using these tools, not just in the lab but in people’s everyday lives and workflows,” she said. “To my knowledge, we haven’t seen any compelling evidence that the spread of these generative AI tools is significantly increasing productivity yet. Everything we are seeing suggests the need for humans to remain in the driving seat with the tools we use.”
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A study by the Henley Business School in May found 49% of workers reported there were no formal guidelines for AI use in their workplace and more than a quarter felt their employer did not offer enough support.
Prof Keiichi Nakata at the school said people were more comfortable about being transparent in their use of AI than 12 months earlier but “there are still some elements of AI shaming and some stigma associated with AI”.
He said: “Psychologically, if you are confident with your work and your expertise you can confidently talk about your engagement with AI, whereas if you feel it might be doing a better job than you are or you feel that you will be judged as not good enough or worse than AI, you might try to hide that or avoid talking about it.”
OpenAI’s head of solutions engineering for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Matt Weaver, said: “We’re seeing huge demand from business leaders for company-wide AI rollouts – because they know using AI well isn’t a shortcut, it’s a skill. Leaders see the gains in productivity and knowledge sharing and want to make that available to everyone.”
