Surveys show executives are more positive about AI than employees

In short: New surveys show a steady gap, executives are confident AI will help their companies, while many employees are less convinced and less trusting.

What's going on

Several recent surveys point to the same pattern, business leaders are more upbeat about AI than the people they manage. More than two-thirds of corporate leaders expect AI to improve their financial well-being within five years. Only 27% of U.S. workers said the same, a 41-point gap, according to surveys cited by The New York Times.

Leaders also report bigger changes to daily work. Nearly 75% of executives said AI has substantially changed work processes, compared with 58% of entry- and mid-level employees. In a Charter survey of 5,002 U.S. office workers who already use AI at work, 32.8% of executives said they trust AI more than their own judgment, versus 16.3% of individual contributors.

Workday found a similar split in adoption. It reported that 95% of senior and executive leaders use AI, compared with 62% of individual contributors. Workday also said 41% of employees who use AI deliberately conceal that use, and only 35% said their employer’s expectations for disclosing AI use were very or extremely clear.

What to watch

Companies may need clearer rules and training so employees know when AI use is allowed and how to check its work (like proofreading a draft from a helpful assistant). It is also worth watching whether this trust gap affects job satisfaction and how quickly AI tools spread beyond leadership roles. These surveys are not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison since they used different questions and groups, and some only surveyed people already using AI.

Source: NYTimes