65% Of Employees Would Love To Roll Back Workplace Ai

IT leaders have been making generative AI tools available across the enterprise for just three years, and a significant majority of their business users has already had enough.

According to a report from Adaptavist, 65% of 2,500 knowledge workers surveyed say they “regularly feel nostalgic about how work operated before the widespread adoption of AI.”

This “pre-AI nostalgia” appears to be due in part to business users feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of learning how to use AI on top of their day-to-day job tasks. Moreover, 46% of workers say their concerns about AI have gone unaddressed by management.

“Transparency is critical to truly drive AI engagement; organizations must establish clear guardrails and maintain an open dialogue around AI use and employee choice where workers feel they are being listened to,” Jobin Kuruvilla, field CTO at Adaptavist, tells CIO.

Generational gaps in AI acceptance

Despite an assumption that younger workers are more intuitively adept with AI tools, Gen Z workers (42%) are more likely to prefer the pre-AI world compared to their Gen X colleagues (26%). This may support the growing concern that AI is quickly is hitting entry-level workers the hardest, while creating new career opportunities for more skilled workers who have been in the industry longer.

When asked about fears surrounding job obsolescence due to AI, 54% of all workers surveyed said they are “concerned AI could reduce the need for their role within the next five years.” Broken out by organizational level, junior employees (23%) and C-level executives (29%) expressed the most concern about AI job loss, compared to 13% for mid-level employees and 12% for senior employees.

Additionally, 47% of C-level executives and 36% of directors are looking to move industries, change careers, or step away entirely due to concerns of AI eliminating their positions. Still, plenty of workers are ready to face the new challenges of an AI-driven workplace, with 74% saying they are actively learning new skills to stay relevant, and 85% of C-level leaders saying the same.

Lack of transparency drives AI fatigue

One in three workers (36%) are already experiencing “AI fatigue,” leading to less frequent use of AI tools and active resistance to AI for day-to-day tasks. More than a third of workers (36%) also appears to be confused about AI use expectations in their role.

When implemented quickly without proper training and transparency, AI initiatives can lead to hidden productivity costs. Of those surveyed, 42% say they “spend more time verifying AI output than they save using it,” while 52% say they regularly spend time correcting AI-generated work from colleagues. Additionally, 49% say low-quality AI outputs slow down projects, 55% say AI-generated content reduces overall team efficiency, and 46% say it makes their work feel “more repetitive and less meaningful.”

Half of all workers also feel their performance is now “directly or indirectly compared to AI-generated output.” Providing clarity about how AI impacts or doesn’t impact an employee’s career is important to staving off AI fatigue.

For those chalking this all up to change resistance, know this: 67% of workers surveyed say they want their organization to increase the use of AI, and 69% say they believe AI is being used ethically within the organization. What they lack is a roadmap, guidance, and training to understand how to best implement AI at work, and to ensure it’s being used effectively.

“Ultimately, by automating the mundane tasks that make work feel repetitive —organizations can refocus their specialists on high-value creativity, transforming AI from a source of fatigue into a powerful engine for meaningful human achievement,” says Anand Unadkat, a senior solutions architect at Atlassian.

IT leaders and their executive colleagues need to focus more on the change management artistry necessary to help get them there.