Workers can't decide if their junior colleagues should use AI at work. CNBC and SurveyMonkey surveyed people who have opinions about other people's productivity tools. The result: division. Pure, meaningless division.
This is what we've come to. Employees spending their workday contemplating whether the newest hire should be allowed to ask ChatGPT to format an email. Not whether the company is profitable. Not whether their own job will exist in six months. Whether Brad from accounts receivable should be permitted to use a spell checker that talks back.
The survey found workers are split. Some think juniors should use AI. Some think they shouldn't. Some presumably think about AI while pretending to work. None of this affects stock prices. None of this affects earnings. None of this affects anything except the amount of time HR departments spend crafting policies no one will read.
Here's what actually happened: someone at CNBC needed content. They commissioned a survey about AI because AI gets clicks. They found out workers have conflicting opinions about a workplace tool. They published it as news. You read it. You learned nothing. The cycle continues.
The junior employees will use AI anyway. They'll use it at home. They'll use it on their phones. They'll use it in the bathroom while their manager posts on LinkedIn about the importance of traditional skill-building. The seniors will complain. The juniors will get promoted faster. The seniors will blame AI instead of examining why they've been in the same role for seven years.
Everyone wants the next generation to suffer exactly as much as they did, just with different tools and for reasons they can't articulate during the survey.
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