How Consumers Feel About AI — and What Leaders Can Do About It

Welcome to Leading Disruption, a weekly letter about disruptive leadership in a transforming world. Every week we’ll discover how the best leaders set strategy, build culture, and manage uncertainty, all in service of driving disruptive, transformative growth. For more insights like these, join my private email list.

How are consumers feeling about AI?

Turns out, it’s complicated!

PA Consulting recently conducted research into consumers’ excitement and concern surrounding AI, and the data is fascinating.?

I’m excited to share insights from this study — and to give disruptive leaders clear actions they can take to address these concerns and implement AI within their organizations more intentionally.??

Emotions surrounding AI are complex

PA Consulting collected data from U.S. consumers in March and found (unsurprisingly!) that generative AI has been very popular.?

But emotions vary — wildly.

According to our research, 85% of people are very interested in AI. But nearly the same amount (82%) are very apprehensive about it, while 73% are excited and 65% are confused.

My favorite takeaway is that 38% are actually angry about AI. We don’t have much insight into why they’re feeling angry (that will require further research!), but it likely stems from a lack of control and how AI is taking away some jobs.

Let’s go back to the 65% of people who are confused.

People don’t recognize everyday AI

A key insight is that people don’t really know what’s going on with AI. They think they know what it is, but…not really. And this is reflected in the research.

AI is already in our lives, but people don’t even recognize it!

Our research shows that 52% of people correctly identified that online assistant tools — like Siri and Alexa — use AI, 48% understand that AI uses facial recognition, 47% realize that programs like ChatGPT use AI, and 36% know “discover” or “for you” pages rely on AI.

Why is this so interesting?

These are tools we use every day!?

Things like recommendations for what to buy when you’re shopping online and adding songs to your playlists or movies to your Netflix or AppleTV watchlist all use AI — and yet less than a third of consumers can identify that these tools use AI. They assume that AI is this big, new, nebulous thing, but it’s been used for a decade now in everyday tools.?

People are incredibly wary of AI

Obviously, there’s a big problem here!

Consumers aren’t sure what AI is or how it’s being used, so they don’t trust it.

In fact, 72% of people agree that they don’t know enough about it to trust it. And 49% say that the technology industry purposefully makes it difficult to understand what AI actually means — and 85% believe that companies care more about protecting their AI tools than being transparent with consumers.?

Yikes. We’ve got a lot of work to do on trust-building!

Four intentional strategies to guide AI implementation

We know that, when AI is used in everyday tools and the consumer can clearly see the value and the benefit, they trust it.?

So how do we move the dialogue forward??

1. Create guidelines and good governance.?

Consumers see the need for the government to play a role in AI. Interestingly, 71% of people think that AI needs to be better regulated, and 62% say it needs to be regulated by a board. And only a third (34%) think the U.S. government is doing the best job they can regulating artificial intelligence.?

Within an organization, it’s important to have established principles. Where we run into problems is that we don’t understand all the issues that people might raise. So we need to be open to discussing issues, to talking about what’s right and wrong, to having conversations about how AI aligns with your organization's values.?

Establishing an AI ethics board can help. They can continuously review issues as they come up and establish guidelines: We do this. We don’t do this. Because when you have clear processes and policies, you can go faster — and you can more clearly see the pros and cons.

2. Be clear about the benefits.

The data shows that consumers believe AI will have many benefits — everything from a better online shopping experience and the production of more affordable goods to better physical and mental well-being and more financial health.?

When asked how willing they are to use AI, people’s willingness rises when you discuss very specific benefits. For example, 61% are willing to use AI if it will help them get a more accurate diagnosis, 52% if it will provide a more personalized treatment plan, 47% if it makes cheaper products, and 43% if it will offer personalized financial advice.

So organizations need to outline clear, tangible benefits — not just talk about how great the technology is. That doesn’t move the dialogue forward. That doesn’t create trust.

3. Choose the right person to explain AI.

People don’t trust just anyone to tell them about AI. (They certainly don’t trust the companies creating the technology: Only about 50% of people trust the company; the other half…not so much.)?

But 65% trust experts in the field and academics, 63% will listen to friends and family, 56% look to business leaders, and 53% turn to independent regulators.?

For organizations needing to explain what AI does — whether you’re a technology company creating AI or a C-suite executive who needs to communicate with employees about AI’s use internally — think about who’s best positioned to deliver information to people. The data shows that most people will trust the message when it’s coming from influencers in their personal networks or work networks.?

4. Clearly explain why AI is needed in the workplace.

Consumers are very clear-eyed about AI: 52% feel that it will replace jobs in the future but that it won’t happen in their lifetimes. And yet about 40% of people are worried that AI will replace their job.?

There is optimism though. Our research found that 69% of people believe that learning new skills to manage AI will be essential and 51% believe that AI will do admin-based tasks so they can focus on more important work — and that will lead to more job satisfaction (according to 45% of people).?

So, yes, people believe that AI will impact their jobs, but half think it will take over parts of their jobs that they don’t enjoy. What does that mean for organizations??

If you can explain why AI is needed — not just what it is — people might be more accepting of it. Outline the use cases. Identify the strategic objectives that you hope to achieve. Do you want to reduce costs? Increase capacity? Discover opportunities? Focus on that!

As leaders, it’s our responsibility to take action. We need to clearly explain why AI is needed, address fears directly, and proactively manage the ethics so that we build trust — and can more successfully and seamlessly integrate AI into our organizations.

AI is constantly evolving, so next week I’ll do a fun dive into what could be next for this technology. I’ve got some interesting future scenarios and possibilities — good and bad — and I can’t wait to hear what you think. See you on Tuesday, April 18 at 9 am PT!

Your Turn

What are you most excited about in this new phase of AI — in particular generative AI? What are you really concerned about? What things come up for you when you're starting to use some of these tools? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!