Pew survey: ‘AI will impact jobs, but not mine.’

Americans think artificial intelligence will majorly impact workers, but not them, according to a recent Pew survey.

A Pew Research Center report titled “AI in Hiring and Evaluating Workers: What Americans Think” says 62 percent of Americans think AI will have a major impact on workers in general, but only 28 percent think they will be impacted personally.

Notably, this survey was conducted in December 2022, which was only a month after the launch of ChatGPT. Since then, we’ve seen the launch of Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing, Google’s chatbot Bard, OpenAI’s new model GPT-4, and countless AI-powered tools launched by companies and independent developers alike. That feels like a lifetime ago in our new AI-powered reality.

A “higher share” of those surveyed think the effects of AI in the workplace will be harmful rather than beneficial. The findings are reminiscent of an idiosyncratic human tendency to think one is invulnerable to bad things happening. It’s called optimism bias and it explains why we think we’ll live longer than average, never get divorced, or never get skin cancer.

There seems to be a disconnect here.
Credit: Pew Research Center

Other findings from the survey paint a more logical picture of the human response to AI. Americans widely oppose using AI to make final hiring decisions, track workers’ movements, and use facial recognition technology to analyze their expressions. A majority of respondents, 66 percent, also said they wouldn’t want to apply for a job that uses AI to make hiring decisions. Feelings are more mixed about whether AI would be better or worse at vetting job applicants, especially when it comes to whether AI eliminates or amplifies racial bias.

Results about AI’s racial bias are mixed.
Credit: Pew Research Center

But the part where individuals think they’re immune to what’s being considered the fourth industrial revolution highlights an interesting quirk in the human psyche. Despite the fact that AI is already widely used in our everyday lives, another Pew survey found that only 30 percent of Americans correctly identified all of the use cases presented in the survey. Having been told to brace ourselves for the AI revolution, maybe we were expecting it to hit us like a freight train with a flashing neon sign, but the reality is that it has subtly been seeping into our lives for quite some time.

Given the dizzying pace at which generative AI is moving, it’s hard not to wonder how those surveyed would respond now.