Poll: 15% of People Would be OK with an AI Boss

­AI might be replacing jobs at an exponential rate, but a significant percentage of people would not only be OK with AI co-workers, but an AI boss.

That’s according to a Quinnipiac University national poll which surveyed usage, experience, and overall outlook and attitudes regarding artificial intelligence in the workplace and society.

And the first thing that jumps out is the striking contradictions between AI usage & familiarity and its destructive potential in the workforce.

51% of respondents said they’d used AI for research – not surprising given how heavily search engines lean on AI – while more than a quarter used it for writing assistance, school or work projects, or analyzing data, and a growing percentage used it for image creation and medical advice.

That said, more than 75% trust AI either hardly ever (27 percent) or only some of the time (49 percent), 80% are either very concerned (38 percent) or somewhat concerned (42 percent) about AI, and 55% think AI will do more harm than good in their day-to-day lives.

What’s worse, a full 70% think AI will decrease the number of jobs available. And the numbers appear to be moving in that direction.

According to Johns Hopkins University, while AI has created 640,000 roles from 2023–2025, it’s also killing jobs at a rate of about 16,000 per month. So humans are coming out slightly ahead for the time being, but that may not last.

And yet, despite the agita over AI, nearly 1/5 of respondents would be OK with an AI supervisor.

“Eighty percent of Americans would be unwilling to have a job where their direct supervisor was an AI program that assigned their tasks and schedules, while 15 percent would be willing,” notes the poll.

80% is still a healthy bit of pessimism, but given the overwhelming skepticism surrounding AI, you’d think it would be closer to 90-100%.

There’s certainly money to be made with AI, and any companies that flat-out spurn its usage will likely fall behind rivals – its ubiquitous presence at APEC is proof that it won’t be going away anytime soon.

But an AI boss? That’s quite the leap, from search engine optimization and operational efficiency to reporting directly to artificial intelligence.