Why are employees averse to AI in the workplace?

When we’re at work, we want to feel skilled at what we do, drawing from a bank of experience, expertise, and hard work. We want to feel that our judgment matters.

But add AI into the mix, and suddenly, we can feel unskilled and easily replaceable.

In a recently published article, Kimia Ansari, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at the Asper School of Business, explores one of today’s most common workplace dilemmas: how do you integrate AI tools into a workplace in a way that doesn’t alienate the people doing the job?

Her article, “Partner or Rival? How Human-Artificial Intelligence Conflict Shapes Artificial Intelligence Aversion,” co-authored with Maryam Ghasemaghaei (DeGroote School of Business), was published in a recent issue of the prestigious Financial Times 50-ranked Journal of Management Information Systems.

Competing with AI solutions

In the experiment, Ansari asked participants to take on the role of employees using an AI agent to solve a decision-making problem. She studied how participants responded when their own judgment conflicted with the AI’s recommendation, and whether their reaction changed depending on whether they viewed the AI as a competitor or a collaborator.

A participant might believe, Ansari says, that “based on my expertise, option A is the best option.” But what happens when AI recommends option B?  “Both conclusions may be rational and reasonable,” she says, “but we cannot say whether either is right or wrong.” 

Her results showed that these disagreements led participants to experience cognitive dissonance—the psychological discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs simultaneously. However, this dissonance was more salient when participants perceived AI as a competitor.

“Users know that AI is an advanced tool with high technical capability, high speed, and high accuracy, with access to lots of different types of data,” Ansari says. This can lead competitors to doubt the rational conclusions they came to through their knowledge, experience and expertise, threatening their self-perception of competence and authority. By contrast, participants with a cooperative mindset were more likely to frame the disagreement as an opportunity to refine their judgments.

A harmful defense mechanism

In her initial hypotheses, Ansari thought that the conflict between a human solution and an AI one might lead the employee to investigate the decision further—perhaps alleviating dissonance by doing extra research. 

Instead, she found, the inner world of competitors turns into a Star Trek episode as they put their shields up and set AI phasers to stun. 

“Employees competing with AI may start to believe that AI is going to replace me, AI is going to threaten my authority, my control, my expertise,” she says. 

“In order to safeguard themselves, competitors may not be willing to expend effort to understand why AI gave them the solution it did, and instead become averse to AI,” Ansari says. 

In a world that is rapidly integrating AI into the workplace—with the potential to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and accuracy—this outright dismissal of AI may be an impediment to progress for organizations.