Seventy percent of U.S. consumers want to use AI in their jobs, according to a new Gartner, Inc. survey. In nine categories of work tasks, more workers wanted AI to help than wanted AI to do everything or do nothing. The majority would like AI to help with tasks such as mistake reduction (58%), problem-solving (57%), information discovery and process simplification (both 56%). 

More than half (57%) of U.S. workers wanted AI to do two or more of those tasks. A smaller group, 18% of workers, wanted AI to do five or more tasks — consider these people to be the “robot-welcomers.”

Yet, while workers are interested in having AI help them, they still want to maintain control over these solutions, rather than having them run automatically for tasks such as personalizing services and messages or resolving problems. Workers also hope to maintain control over how their data is used for training such AI solutions. 

Not all consumers would like to use AI at work, however. Among survey respondents who did not want to use AI at work, privacy and security concerns were cited as the top two reasons for declining AI. Other reasons for declining AI are that people would rather have human interaction or they are unsure of AI’s benefit. Notably, people who trust their employer are more likely to want to use AI at work than those who demonstrate lower levels of trust.

Gartner recommends that IT leaders interested in using AI solutions in the workplace gain support for this technology by demonstrating that AI is not meant to replace or take over the workforce. Rather, it can help workers be more effective and work on higher-value tasks. Mandate that AI features primarily aid workers through assisting their decisions instead of eliminating them and quell fears by communicating directly how AI will affect employees’ privacy.

For this report, Gartner surveyed 1,515 respondents from the U.S. in October and November 2021 to measure consumer and employee attitudes regarding AI.

Read the full report by Gartner.