🌎 Bonus Short: How AI Anxiety is Changing the World with Jennifer Moss

Join Jennifer and Daniel in this bonus clip as they discuss how AI anxiety is changing the world in big ways.

Key takeaways about AI Anxiety:

• 🕴️It makes business leaders rush into solutions without understanding consequences (and sometimes the problems they think they're solving)
• 👩‍🔧 It makes professionals lose hope for their future (especially young professionals and first time job seekers)

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
In your interviews and research, what have you heard that AI contributes to this moment in time?

(00:08):
Gosh, it's having a major impact. There was this data point that I thought was really interesting
and CEOs and their top disruptors, technology was not even the top six of their most biggest
disruptors that they were worrying about in 2019. And that number went from in 2020, it moved to

(00:30):
maybe out of the six main disruptors. It was on the list finally. And within two years,
it shot up to number one. And now AI and technology and this rapid escalation of adoption
is really freaking out everyone because there's this pressure for senior leaders and CEOs to adopt

(00:55):
AI. There's this mentality like we can't get behind. It's going to make us not competitive.
It's going to impact our ability to be future ready if we don't have AI. But then there's also
this other side where I don't even know why I'm doing this. Why am I doing this? I don't really

(01:15):
have a strategy. I don't really have a plan. I don't really have a communication strategy that
I'm prepared to enact. My employees are feeling like there's no plan. They feel obsolete. And the
senior executives, senior leaders are feeling this push and pull, this battle of having to adopt

(01:36):
something that they don't even know why they're adopting. And what's come at the cost of that is
not having sustainability. And I think that what AI is doing is amazing in a lot of ways, but we're
not really appreciating the promise of AI because it's scattered in the way that we've assimilated
into the workforce. Gallup data and this Microsoft Trends report that they partnered with LinkedIn

(02:03):
to really uncover how people are feeling. And one and two, workers globally are expressing a sense
of AI anxiety and they had a very robust data set. And what I think is most interesting that Gallup
found is that it is in our younger cohort more than it has been before, because obsolescence used

(02:23):
to really be around automation and being forced out through the new robots that were coming into
warehouses and sectors weren't feeling as fear of obsolescence as maybe others like manufacturing,
but now it's pervasive. And that has a lot to do with AI. And what happens when you feel a sense

(02:44):
of obsolescence, it reduces your hopefulness so you don't see yourself in the future of that
organization. It makes you less loyal because you don't feel like you're necessarily being cared for.
And it can be very subconscious feeling, but if you're uncertain about what your future looks like
and no one's telling you that you're safe or that you're going to even be skilled up to be
part of the organization, whether AI or not is going to take over a certain aspect of your role,

(03:10):
all of these things make people tune out. They disengage, which is why we're seeing the highest
level of active disengagement that we've seen in 10 years. But if leaders did a better job at work,
they wouldn't have so many people fearing this kind of this doomsday scenario. So I do think it's
playing a big role in a lot of ways, but I think we've missed the point on how to ensure that AI

(03:34):
is delivering on its promise, which is we were going to take away the mundane and boring task
and then fill your day up with all of this creative, exciting work because that's what AI
is supposed to do. When you just take away someone's actual job and then not replace it with
creative opportunities, it should be that person that was data mining is now providing data insights.

(03:58):
They're looking at it with a different lens and be able to communicate the benefits of what they've
learned. We have to skill people up to do that and that hasn't happened. And so I think these are all
very solvable things. It's all about curiosity, exploration, and the more that becomes part of
the culture, which is not hard to do, it just amplifies our excitement and our enthusiasm for AI.

(04:23):
I started this podcast because I wanted to stand at the gate of businesses using AI and see what
separated hype from lasting impact. Back when cities had walls, you had to go into the city to
do business at the market. So if you wanted to talk to someone, you waited by the gate until they
came in or came out. Do that enough times and you could talk to everyone. That's what I want to do,

(04:48):
stand at the gate of people doing business with AI and talk to them, see what they do and why they
do it. If you know someone that's making an impact in the world of AI, would you connect them with me?
You can find me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at [e-mail]. That's
[e-mail]. Thanks for listening.