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According to a new study ‘AI at Work’ conducted by Oracle and Future Workplace, employees are ready to take instructions from robots at work, but organizations are not doing enough to help their staff embrace artificial intelligence (AI).

The study that covered 1,320 US HR leaders and employees, found that 93% of the respondents would trust orders from a robot at work.

The study identified a large gap between the way people are using AI at home and at work. While 70% of people are using some form of AI in their personal life, only 6% of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and only 24% of employees are currently using some form of AI at work.

To determine why there is such a gap in AI adoption when people are clearly ready to embrace AI at work the study also examined HR leader and employee perceptions of the benefits of AI, the obstacles preventing AI adoption and the business consequences of not embracing AI.

Here are the key highlights from the study:

• Employees believe that AI will improve operational efficiencies (59%), enable faster decision making (50%), significantly reduce cost (45%), enable better customer experiences (40%) and improve the employee experience (37%)
• HR leaders believe AI will positively impact learning and development (27%), performance management (26%), compensation/payroll (18%) and recruiting and employee benefits (13%)
• Almost 90% of HR leaders are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI as part of their job and to make matters worse, they are not currently empowered to address an emerging AI skill gap in their organization
• About 51% of employees are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI and 71% believe AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years. 72% of HR leaders noted that their organization does not provide any form of AI training program
• On top of the skill gap, HR leaders and employees identified cost (74%), failure of technology (69%) and security risks (56%) as the other major barriers to AI adoption in the enterprise

Interestingly, despite all the talk about people being worried about AI entering the workplace, the study found the opposite to be true with 79% of HR leaders and 60% of employees believing a failure to adopt AI will have negative consequences on their own careers, colleagues, and overall organization.

Respondents identified reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss as the top three consequences of failing to embrace AI in the workforce. Meanwhile, from an organizational standpoint, respondents believe embracing AI will have the most positive impact on directors and C-Suite executives. By failing to empower leadership teams with AI, organizations could lose a competitive advantage.

By Shweta Modgil

Source: People Matters