A Bloomberg report this week cited a Harris Poll survey conducted for the American Staffing Association (ASA) which found that increasing numbers of American workers fear that developing technologies will make their jobs obsolete.
The survey found that 47% of survey respondents said that their jobs could easily be replaced by machines. In a similar survey in 2017, only 27% of workers reported believing that automation, including robots and AI would be capable of replacing them.
ASA CEO Richard Wahlquist said of the findings, “In just a few short years, worker attitudes toward artificial intelligence have changed drastically. Workers used to see AI programs as something that could help human workers. Now, workers are concerned AI could be replacing them altogether.”
According to the report, industrial workers were most likely to expect that technology advances would replace their jobs. Healthcare workers reported the lowest levels of feelings of vulnerability to replacement by technology. Younger workers, black workers, and Hispanic workers all reported the highest levels of concern over advances in technology taking their jobs, with Gen Z and Millennials having roughly 55% of their members certain they would be replaced by technology.
Less than 40% of white Americans were concerned about being replaced by technology. Only about 26% of Baby Boomers had such concerns.
Roughly 74% of survey respondents reported that they ‘strongly agree’ or ‘somewhat agree’ that automation advances could cause unemployment to surge.
Regardless of their concerns, however, the majority of those surveyed from all groups reported seeing the advances in the use of technology in the workplace as mostly a beneficial change, with over 30% already using AI products in their work.
Acceptance of advances in automation appeared to correlate with higher job positions, with 65% of senior managers seeing automation as good for workers, while only 51% of mid-level employees said the same thing.
The survey was conducted online, surveying 2,000 US adults from June 20th to the 22nd.
