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It turns out that Gen Z is often just as anxious about artificial intelligence booting them from a job as many other people.
One of the most common assumptions made in corporate America over the last quarter century is that “digital natives”—a term coined by educator Marc Prensky in 2001—are inherently comfortable with digital technology. It’s a logical inference. Almost any discipline one grows up with is easier to master than one learned in adulthood, which gives a natural edge to millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012).
But just because young people might be comfortable with technology doesn’t mean they don’t worry about it—especially when it comes to the growing influence of AI.
“Gen Z: Redefining the Future of Work,” a white paper from Netherlands-based Top Employers Institute, draws its insights from interviews with 1,700 people aged 18-17 who live in nine countries on four continents. And while some of its analysis confirms common assumptions about Gen Z’s workplace attitudes (83% of them said employers are responsible for their workers’ mental health, for example), one finding is something of a needle scratch.
For example, while 77% of Gen Zers hoped that AI would “allow them to learn new skills” and 72% said they felt prepared to take advantage of the technology, only 60% thought that AI would have a positive effect on their individual careers. Indeed, a fifth of the young respondents disagreed—somewhat or strongly—that AI would benefit their professional lives.
That disgruntlement was even more pronounced when it came to young workers in media and advertising jobs. Only 50% of them thought that AI “will create new work opportunities for me,” a chilly retort to the common narrative that AI will create new jobs even as it eliminates others.
“What we found in our research was a much more muted outlook,” the paper’s authors state. “This generation recognizes that AI is here to stay, and has some short-term benefits, but [Gen-Z employees] also have some anxiety about how it may impact their lives, and the lives of other employees, in the long-term.”
In a notable wrinkle, Gen-Z wariness over AI was predominantly a western-world phenomenon. Only about half of respondents in the U.K. and the U.S. (50% and 54%, respectively) believed that AI would have a positive effect on their careers. By contrast, in China and India, those figures were 73% and 80%, respectively.
The bifurcated feeling that AI could be a force for good in the workplace even as it threatens individual workers also appeared in a Deloitte paper published last year.