- One in six American workers says that they lie about the use of AI to meet job expectations
- The engineers who use the new threat, not the tools themselves
- Many workers copy alphabet companions only to look competent in modern workplaces
As IA tools extend in office environments, many US workers are now in a strange situation: pretending to use artificial intelligence at work.
A recent survey conducted by the technology recruitment firm Howdy.com discovered that one in six employees claims to lie about the use of AI.
This phenomenon seems to be a reaction not only for management expectations but also to the deepest insecurities around the stability of work in a saturated landscape of AI.
Survival of the most artificial
Under the behavior is what some call “Ai-Nxiety”, a concern born of conflicting narratives.
On the one hand, companies urge employees to adopt AI to boost productivity; On the other hand, those same workers are warned as AI, or someone more skilled to use it, could soon replace them.
This pressure sensation is particularly acute when considering workers who fear being displaced by technically qualified peers, such as engineers who actively use LLM -based systems and other AI tools.
How did a commentator get The registration: “You can lose your job to an engineer who uses AI.”
For some, the message is clear: adapt or fall behind.
At the end of 2023, a survey conducted by EY discovered that two thirds of American collar workers feared that AI expert colleagues would go through the promotion.
In this environment, imitate the behavior of literacy of AI becomes a way of protecting against obsolescence.
To further complicate the image is the lack of adequate training.
Howdy.com reports that a quarter of workers expected to use AIs do not receive instructions on how to do it.
Without adequate guide, many are stuck between the expectations of the management and reality of the poorly integrated AI systems.
Some give up on dominating the tools and simply act as if they were already doing it.
Meanwhile, contradictory work standards deepen confusion.
Another survey of the Slack workforce index found that almost half of the world desktop workers felt uncomfortable when telling managers who use AI, worrying that they can make them look lazy or not very original.
Therefore, some pretend not to use even when they do.
In the heart of the subject there is a growing mismatch between what companies point out, “AI is the future” and what employees experience: unclear expectations, low support and changing norms around competition.
Whether the AI really replaces the works or not, the psychological cost is already here, and pretending to be an AI user has become a new strange survival strategy.
