As employee confidence in AI's potential grows, so does their anxiety

• Workers are more confident — and anxious — about AI than they were a year ago, a BCG survey found.
• Leaders are also more confident and trained in AI than their workers.
• Companies are trying to address the AI knowledge gap with upskilling programs for their employees.

Generative AI seems to be a double-edged sword.

According to a new report from Boston Consulting Group, workers' confidence in generative AI has grown over the past year — but so has their anxiety.

BCG surveyed over 13,100 respondents, evenly divided between frontline, managerial, and leadership roles.

It found that confidence in generative AI surged 16% between 2023 to 2024, but that anxiety did too: about 5%. The percentage of workers who worry that AI will eliminate their jobs in the next decade has jumped significantly in the past year.

Frontline workers — those without managerial responsibilities — are most anxious about the technology, with 22% saying they were worried about it compared to 18% of managers and 15% of leaders.

There's a clear knowledge gap between executives and their employees, too. Only 28% of frontline workers reported being trained on how the technology will impact their jobs, compared to 30% of managers and 50% of leaders. Frontline workers say their top three concerns about generative AI are that they haven't been given enough time to learn about it, sufficient training opportunities, or knowledge of when to use the technology.

"There is undoubtedly a shortage in AI talent," Alex Libre, cofounder and principal recruiter of Einstellen Talent, a service that matches job candidates with generative AI startups, previously told Business Insider.

Companies are trying to address the gap by offering workers upskilling programs.

PwC, the consulting firm, has rolled out a training program for 75,000 workers across the United States and Mexico to teach employees how to incorporate the technology into their daily work. The goal is for all 75,000 employees to "know how to use it and start to be able to comment on it in a very informed way," Shannon Schuyler, US chief purpose and inclusion officer at PwC, previously told BI.

Others say the goal is to free up humans to do more meaningful work and even get more fulfillment from their jobs. But the worry right now is that AI might draw a line between the haves and have-nots: Those who know how to use AI and keep jobs and those who don't and lose them.