Research shows a gap opening up between employers and staff

A new report by King’s College London shows a gap opening up between how employers and staff view AI in the workplace. Employers generally see AI as an opportunity, while workers are starting to see it as a threat to their jobs.

69% of employers believe AI will create new job opportunities but only 35% of workers agree. More than half of workers (54%) believe AI will lead to widespread job losses.

56% of employers state that AI is primarily acting as an assistant to staff, but workers tend to believe AI is being used to replace them.

When it comes to workplace guidance, 88% of employers are confident they understand how their staff use AI. But 42% of workers state their employer has given them no clear guidance on using these tools.

Our take: As the CEO of Anthropic recently said “AI technology can only disseminate at the speed of trust.” Workers are in different places with AI and the onus is on leaders to earn trust, starting with meeting people where they are and having the conversations.

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Source: Report published by The Policy Institute and the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence at King's College London. Fieldwork conducted in April 2026. Surveyed of 2,000 UK adults included a subset of over 1,200 active workers + survey of 506 senior business decision-makers from UK organisations with 11 or more employees. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/one-in-five-britons-think-ai-will-create-civil-unrest-study-finds