Season 1 Episode 1: Addressing the Fear of AI
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:03 Fear of AI in the Workplace
03:26 Signs and Symptoms of Fear in the Workplace
06:46 The Importance of AI Fluency for Leaders
08:09 Promoting Curiosity, Learning, and Collaboration
Welcome everyone to the Humans and AI in the Workplace podcast. Over the last few years, it's become clear that artificial intelligence, AI, is one of the most impactful and disruptive transformations in the workplace. As a leader, you may be wondering how to get started and how to do it in an intelligent way. Or you may be stuck on how to overcome some of the people issues and human bottlenecks your AI has crashed into.
We are here today with Dr. Debra Panipucci and Leisa Hart from AI Adaptive to discuss today's topic on how leaders can reduce the fear of AI. So we're talking about the fear of AI in the workplace. There is one question that we are asked over and over again, and that is, do we see a lot of fear of AI in workplaces? So the answer is yes. We do see fear of AI in the workplace.
I think one of the things when I think about the fear of AI in the workplace is there's not a lot of proactive conversation about it other than what's in the media, which is quite a motive around AI coming to steal jobs and the displacement of people. And there's no doubt that there will be some displacement, particularly of people in vulnerable roles, certain skills, but it's a very one -sided view of AI coming into workplaces that does drive a lot of fear. We see fear coming into organisations for change generally. It's always the place that we start talking to leaders about how to understand how it presents and how to be proactive when it comes to fear. Yeah, there's two areas of fear, I guess, if we categorise them. One is the job insecurity in that AI is coming to take our jobs. The second type is the detrimental effect of AI on the world. The AI is coming to destroy the world. And you kind of see those two types of fear playing out. So if I think about people's fear of AI in the workplace, there are the different layers to that as well around potentially, you know, that surveillance concern, but also the types of roles and tasks they are doing that could be completed by intelligent technologies. The thing to think about is what are the signs and symptoms of that? Because people won't be talking about it openly, as you said before, Lisa. So those signs and symptoms that we often see in changes anyway, what would they look like?
So in terms of signs, you might see people potentially being more argumentative than they ordinarily are. That fighting kind of tussling, trying to hold on to something. Confusion and frustration can often present as pushback and resistance to change. We see that a lot. Sometimes it's just not clear for people what the future state looks like and how they can be successful in that future state. So their behaviours now are holding on to the current state or the past because they're not clear where they're going to. So that can present in a number of different ways. Sometimes it's people being quieter than they normally are, not asking questions, presenteeism where they're in a room but they're not really actively engaged in the conversation.nor are they taking in any of the information about what's happening. We see that a lot. We also see sometimes the pace of change that's being driven doesn't set people up for success because leaders haven't done the go slow preparation and that thoughtful planning piece first in order to have some sense of urgency through the implementation or the execution of whatever that intelligent technology changes in their business. So they're not necessarily thinking about the impacts. So therefore, the symptoms and the signs of that are people are confused, people are trying to figure out why this change is important, how it fits in with all the other things that they're being asked to do day to day. It sounds like it might come across as a lack of change resilience, that distraction, unable to focus, not coping well, pushing back when the change is suggested, fighting it, that tension that sits in there when people don't have the energy or the cognitive space to process something because their resilience is low. Yeah, definitely. And that again can present in different ways depending on someone's preference when they're under pressure. So some people when they're under pressure and their resilience is low, they might turn their focus inwards and get quiet, where others might turn their focus outwards and get argumentative, et cetera. Though I'm thinking it's not actually resilience, it's a fear of AI that presents like a lack of resilience, change resilience. You know how people always come to us and say, oh, my people aren't Resilient for change. Can you come and fix that? It's very rarely about the resilience for change. It's mostly about the leaders ability to do the thoughtful thinking and planning in advance, understand what's changing. Firstly, understand why this change is important. Why is AI coming into your business? What does that actually mean for your people? And the benefits, right? Absolutely. What are the impacts on the skills, the culture and the organisational structure, you have to have a view on that as a leader before you even start engaging your team. And to be able to do that as a leader, you need to understand the technology and be AI fluent, which means that you can use the terms in the right context so you're not confusing or creating more fear because you're using incorrect terminology in the wrong context and have realistic expectations about what AI means for your business. You don't have to have all the answers, that's not the point, but what you do need to have is a foundational understanding. You definitely don't need to be a coder.
But you do need to have a foundational understanding of the terms and to be AI fluent so that you're using the right terms in the right way and you understand its capabilities and you understand your team and their skills and where the benefits are of the technology. I was thinking about how a key role that humans will play is that strategist that brings together different AI support mechanisms that are all doing pieces of a particular piece of work. And the human's role is to bring them all together as kind of like a master aggregator that is more strategic and works at a higher level than the AI could work at to extend their capabilities. And so for our leaders out there listening, what we really want you to take away from this episode is, that AI can be something that does trigger a fear response in your people. And what we know from integrative neuroscience is that when we're fearful, we don't have access to parts of our brain that actually help us navigate that change as effective as we possibly could. Things like our perception, it's our ability to think more broadly about, you know, where can I?
AI really benefit our work and how could we maximise this? And our cognition, which is our working memory and how we think about things and hold them in our mind and look at, well, what have we done in the past and what can we do in the moment and what does the future look like and sort of work all that through in the moment. We don't get access to our creativity, which is our ability to think outside the box, to be playful with ideas and think about how we can use AI to solve our pain points, like how can the way that other people in the industry use AI. And finally, one of the other parts that we don't get access to in terms of neural resources is our ability to really collaborate. We retreat into ourselves and we don't necessarily think about co -creation or working with others who have got some experience that we could learn from. We certainly don't feel like we're safe to ask for help. And we don't necessarily think about how can we work with someone who has introduced AI into their role before, into their team or whatever, and start to learn from those experiences in the context of what we're going through. Instead, we kind of seem to sort of think about that self -preservation and kind of retreat into that fundamental, basic survival mode. So if as a leader if you're seeing your people stop to do the things that they ordinarily would do when something is going on in the business or in their work around those, you know, lateral thinking skills and collaboration and asking for help and learning from others and being sort of really creative and playful. That's a sign that you've got fear happening in your people or in your team. And so as a leader, if you see those signs. it's your job to create the path for cognitive processing and cognitive intelligence in essence, right? To be able to create the space for people to reduce that threat response in their brain and move into a space of openness and curiosity and acceptance of change.
and less of the protection, self -preservation, shutting down. Yeah, that's a good point, Deb, because we know that getting people to be curious is a way of disrupting that fear response, and it takes them into a place of being more open. And if you can promote being curious and people learning and wanting, if you can sort of inspire them to want to learn and be intrigued by what's happening with the technology and where its benefits are and where its opportunities are, and also where it's not yet going to disrupt in their world. That's a really great place for leaders to sort of step in and lead this type of change with their people. And you can only do that as a leader if you fundamentally understand AI at a basic foundational level. So your AI fluency is really important to be able to support your team.
to have an understanding, to build their understanding, to kind of talk it through with each other. And it can be really simple ways of doing that, encourage that social learning. It's so valuable in the workplace. You know, we've seen it in some of our organisations that we've worked with promoting a 15 minute once a week brain snacks of, hey, I learned this about AI in the context of our industry or in our role, or even more broadly, you could start off with it more broadly just to sort of start people to get curious and intrigued about it and kind of lean in a little bit. And something you always talk about, Deborah, you know, really praising people for when they are in that space of being open and curious and learning because they're putting that effort in. And we all know from Professor Carol DeWeck's work around fixed and growth mindset that really it's about the effort and the willingness to put in the effort to keep building on your skills and your knowledge.
As a leader, you want to be praising that effort and really acknowledging where they are being curious, where they are learning and how they're applying that in how they move forward with this type of change in the workplace. So to create the cognitive space and the path forward, you need real clarity and also coherence. Everything needs to line up and make sense for people. And so what we often do in change is We start at the beginning, we start at the why, and we start at the benefits to highlight the reasons for creating a change like this. We often say that we've never met an organisation yet that creates change just to annoy people or to disrupt the way the business works.leaders always create change because they see a really good reason for doing that. And one of the key data points that we often refer to is that by 2033, Gartner expects that AI solutions will result in over half a billion net new human jobs. And they're new. And so, yes, you may be able to transition away from some of your traditional work and roles and tasks, but your people may be moving into new and more strategic areas. And so highlighting benefits like this or the path forward like this gives people something to lock onto and creates that cognitive path. But you also need to create coherence. So if you are suggesting that there will be new jobs, then you need to have a path forward that shows people where new jobs may exist or where you're transitioning work in different areas. New jobs will be created that we are not even thinking about right now because we don't know yet because the technology is stimulating the types of jobs and the types of skills that humans bring to that engagement with technology as it's being developed. So it's really good to be able to have those conversations with your team as a leader to go, well, we've got some great skills in our team already. What is it that we're looking to direct into new pathways and new career pathways or development pathways as we go through this transition of bringing intelligent technology that takes some of the tasks, what needs to sit around that and where the skills that we have in our team that we can use to extend those intelligent capabilities as well as the extension of that human capability. And you don't need to be able to create algorithms and code and program and build machine learning systems or tools. Your team can start working with current AI platforms that are out there that are free, like ChatGPT or Firefly and get in there and put in some prompts and see what spits out and look at then how could this fit into their way of working? Where could they get efficiencies and do things faster and simpler? Now it's not for everything. We've met some people in our network who have had a go at ChatGPT and they really don't like it at all.
So it's not for everybody, but for some people it can provide a starting point, for others it can provide that editing process for their work. You know, there's different ways you can use it. And there's lots of different types of large language models that you can access as well and different types of AI that are worth encouraging your team to experiment with, as you're saying, Deb.
Because each time you have an interaction, you're learning something new about the technology. You're also learning something about how you're using it and what it can really do for you in service of you. I think this is a really important time for leaders to talk about the opportunities for humans to use the technology to their benefit and not let the conversation be driven about what the technology is doing to drive the type of work that humans do. It's actually the other way around. If we understand it, we can use it to augment our existing humanness and what it can't do yet around that, but what it can do and how we can leverage that and how we can be in the driving seat for that. Because if we can give that sense of, you know, you're in control of your career, you're understanding what the technology is doing, again, these are all good tactics for reducing the fear of AI coming into the workplace and disrupting your culture and how your people feel about the use of that intelligent technology. Also helping people to just explore free courses online and giving them the space and time to do free courses online so that they can build up their skills in different areas.
So your ability to make these decisions as a leader, again, comes back to your understanding of intelligent technologies and being what we call AI fluent. Because without that understanding, if you're just relying on what a vendor is telling you about a product, you're possibly not going to get the outcomes you want in the timeframe or in the way that you want. So you have to be really grounded in your knowledge so that you can ask the tough questions so that therefore you can then set expectations in your team based on more robust information than just relying on someone else's word. So it's really important again that you have an understanding of these technologies, not to be a coder, but just have an understanding of the terms and the capabilities and where they're applicable, where they can perform some of these tasks and where they're not even close to resolving yet And then once you have that understanding, then look at what's the complexity in your organisation. So there's generally some type of architectural complexity that you might have to navigate and your chiefly people will be able to talk you through that and help you understand that. But also what are the human complexities and those human bottlenecks that you might crash into? And that's the thoughtful planning we do with leaders in this space to think about what this means for your people and the skills, the culture and the organisational structure. So all of that needs to be grounded in your understanding of the technology and its capabilities. The place to start for leaders is to build yourself a strategic view of your team, your area, where you think you might see AI coming in based on what you know as you develop your AI fluency, where the impact will be for different roles. So you can start to have that thoughtful planned approach to AI in your business. There may be some teams who are already playing with it that you could map out and go, these are the teams who are all over it. And these are the teams who aren't yet and might be a bit fearful of it. One of the things you were just talking about, Leisa was that some teams may be fearful, other teams may be excited by it and be exploring it and can see the potential and they are using it in a whole heap of different ways. Yes, we do see fear, but we also see the opposite. We see people in some teams in organisations are excited by this technology where there is this peak of inflated expectations because a new technology has come out, everybody's really excited by it. Well, not everybody, but there may be some teams who are really excited by it. You may have vendors who are promoting it to you and you need to be able to ask the tough questions because there will be some people in your organisation who are fearful of it, but there are others who are excited by it. And as a leader, you'll need to balance that. And also your critical analysis of that, of the impact of AI in your workplace will be informed by your culture, by how your people work now. It's not to say that that doesn't need to change, but it will guide you as to the type of effort you need to put in to shift that. That's right, because the AI can crash into the human bottlenecks like silos, or if you've got subject matter experts that lack capacity.
And we'll do a whole episode on human bottlenecks where we go into more detail about what that looks like and what you can do about it. But for the purposes of this topic around fear, it's really important as a leader that you have that critical analysis of what's outside of your organisation that you might be wanting to bring in, why you think it's valuable, what benefits you're looking for, and then look at the impacts and the disruption that it may create in your business informed by what you know about your business. You know, there will be pockets, as you said, Deb, where people are excited about the technology and pockets where people are not as excited and potentially fearful, maybe something in between. So your role as a leader, and this is really your duty of care, is to think about how you help the humans and AI be integrated in your workplace in a way where it delivers the benefits that you are aiming for.
So you need to do the thoughtful planning for that and to really think about how you can support your people to be successful through that transition. Because that's the only way you'll get the benefits of AI in your business. If you don't think about that in advance and look to mitigate the fear of it and therefore the behaviours that come from that fear, you won't get the benefits of the technology. And this change is different too other changes we've been through in the past. If only for the very reason that in the past when we brought new technologies or changes into our organisations, they've changed our organisation on its own. And yes, people have been restructured. They may have lost their jobs, but they've been able to find jobs elsewhere in the industry. AI is coming into automate roles, not just.
in your organisation, but across the industry. So if the AI is available for you, it's available for every organisation. So you need to really think about the human side of this. You can't just sweep it under the rug as part of project management. You really need to think about the human impact and the human side of bringing this technology in so that you can integrate and supercharge your humans through this process and where roles are displaced, you help support those people in the best way that you can. As a leader, we get it. You feel a level of responsibility and you have a lot on your plate already. That's why we've covered this topic today because we want to help you get in front of the transformation that's happening of humans and AI in the workplace because it's happening at a really rapid pace and there's a great opportunity for you as a leader to be in front of that change. So it's important to really understand the emotions and the fears that can hold people back as well as where some teams may be actually excited and progressing forward and create a really thoughtful planned approach for your business or your team.
So we hope that this episode has given you some actionable insights that you can take away and start working towards. Thanks for listening.
Humans and AI in the Workplace is brought to you by AI Adaptive. Thank you so much for listening today. You can help us continue to supercharge workplaces with AI by subscribing and sharing this podcast and joining us on LinkedIn.
