Published on: May 28, 2025 at 5:20 pm
Established generative AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard), Anthropic’s Claude, and Jasper (formerly Jarvis) have been competing for users and market share, and the level of competition in the space will continue to grow with the rise of non-U.S. AI startups, including Chinese company DeepSeek. The impact of this new technology in the workplace is far-reaching, and leaders need to guide their organizations’ employees through their psychological resistance with an approach that embraces innovation while acknowledging the potential positive and negatives effects on humans and our emotions.
Academy of Management Scholar Wendy Smith of the University of Delaware noted that history has shown us that when a new generation of technology is introduced, such as generative AI, we resist it psychologically. Smith explained that AI is a great example of this.
“AI introduces all kinds of uncertainty and possibilities, some exciting, others anxiety-inducing,” Smith said.
“It’s a wide range of possibilities, which includes automation of manual tasks, role changes, and job losses, and that type of uncertainty leads us to psychologically fill in the gaps with all kinds of things that we’re afraid of,” she said.
It introduces the question, “What happens with the people who had been doing the work but whose skills are no longer relevant or up to date?”
This AI anxiety curve is not a new concept. Smith cited the introduction of once-disruptive technologies that we now take for granted.
“We’ve seen that story play out in every industry,” Smith said. “For example, we’ve seen how the introduction of the personal computer overtook the mainframe, and the introduction of cloud computing overtook the personal computer.
“We’ve seen it in the past, and when it comes to technology in general is, as a result of this anxiety, there’s this curve of people adopting the anxiety,” she said.
Smith noted that this spread of emotional reactions results in a wave of people, especially in the workplace, feeling this anxiety and thus holding out for the new technology to become more established before gauging its implications, or dismissing its potential to create positive outcomes. Leaders cannot afford to ignore this anxiety. If they are to continually innovate, they need to take into account employees’ emotional responses.
“Effective innovation requires attention to, not rejection of, employees’ emotional experiences,” Smith said.
“The best leaders navigate this learning and adoption curve across the organization with empathy for their workers and clarity on the objectives for deploying the technology with a human-centered approach to leadership that also embraces innovation,” she said.
