AI’s capabilities are growing more sophisticated by the day, and business leaders are rushing to adopt the technology to remain competitive.
But one obstacle to AI adoption is catching companies off guard: their own workers.
A new report published Tuesday from enterprise AI agent firm Writer and research firm Workplace Intelligence finds a significant share of employees are actively trying to sabotage their company’s AI rollout. The report—a survey of 2,400 knowledge workers across the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, including 1,200 C-suite executives—found 29% of employees admit to sabotaging their company’s AI strategy. That number jumps to 44% among Gen Z workers.
The sabotage entails entering proprietary information into public AI tools, or using unapproved AI tools. Some employees report outright refusing to use AI tools. Others have even admitted to tampering with performance reviews or intentionally generating low-output work to make AI appear less effective.
As AI becomes ubiquitous across society, many people are growing to hate it. A recent NBC News poll found just 26% of registered U.S. voters have a positive view of AI, while 46% hold a negative view.
Meanwhile, business leaders and AI experts have issued successive warnings about the threat AI poses to human workers. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI could snatch half of entry-level, white-collar jobs, roles many Gen Z workers hold today. Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman issued a similar warning earlier this year, saying all white-collar work could be automated in 18 months.
An Anthropic study released last month found AI is already theoretically capable of completing the majority of tasks associated with computer science, law, business, and finance, and other major white-collar fields. As the fear of AI automation slowly materializes into reality, many workers, including a sizable chunk of Gen Z employees, are pushing back against the assumed doomed fate of their careers.
Why employees are sabotaging AI—and why it’s backfiring
Of those workers who admitted to sabotaging their company’s AI technology, 30% cited fear AI would take their job. “FOBO”—fear of becoming obsolete—is widespread. KPMG similarly found in November four in 10 workers fear AI could take their job. But ironically, the survey found workers who refuse to adopt AI are actually more vulnerable to layoffs than those embracing the technology. Sixty percent of executives said they’re considering cutting employees who refuse to adopt AI. Another 28% are concerned about the technology’s security risks. Twenty-six percent think the technology diminishes their creativity or value within the company. Another 26% cite poorly executed company AI strategy.
Even as some companies rush to implement AI agents, an MIT report released last year also found 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing not because of the quality of the technology, but the learning gap between tools and organizations.
Yet as some employees drag their feet, researchers found the workers actively implementing AI into their workflows are getting ahead. Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, said AI “super-users,” workers who have mastered generative AI to a high degree of proficiency, are being rewarded for their work more so than laggards.
“The super-users we surveyed were around 3x more likely to have received both a promotion and pay raise in the past year, compared to employees who have been slow to adopt these tools,” Schawbel said in a statement. “Top AI users are also saving nearly nine hours per week using AI—4.5x more than the two hours a week reported by AI laggards.”
A staggering 77% of executives said those employees who refuse to become proficient in AI won’t be considered for promotions or leadership roles as business leaders aim to steer their companies into the future with AI, according to the Writer and Workplace Intelligence report. And 69% are planning AI-related layoffs. But May Habib, CEO and cofounder of Writer, said the most successful companies are not relying on layoffs: They’re optimizing the balance between agentic AI and human capabilities.
“The leaders who are putting in the work to radically redesign operations with human-agent collaboration at the center are the ones compounding their advantage in ways competitors can’t replicate,” Habib said in a statement.
