Unlike previous innovation cycles, generative
AI can augment and replace cognitive work that was previously thought to be untouchable by automation. Although there is likely to be significant workforce displacement there will also be opportunities in new roles if workers can adapt their skills to an ever-changing landscape of tools and technologies. 2, 3
For business leaders, investments in technology are only worthwhile if the workforce can use that technology, if they have the skills to support competitive advantage, and if the workforce adopts new technologies. Key to workforce adaptation is the conundrum of adoption, acceptance and human behavior with technology.
A broad base of research has been undertaken over the last 50 years, investigating how people interact with technology, elucidating the determinants of an individual’ s intention to use and re-use a particular innovation. Alongside individual behavior, research has also been carried out to propose how innovations diffuse throughout a group, sub-culture, or organization. 4 Additionally, self-determination 5 and self-regulation 6 of technology behaviors, as well as cognitive effects also contribute towards how people adopt and accept technologies for their own purposes, and those of their employers.
To understand how to get the most value from generative AI it is important that budget holders and implementers within organizations understand these various drivers of human behavior and take action to maximize transformation through purposeful deployment, readiness and talent pipelines. While maximizing short-term value, it is important to understand that the longer-term consequences of replacing human cognitive work with AI might have severe implications for society— including the risk of a workforce that becomes less capable while the tools they use become more complex.
Technology acceptance and diffusion of innovation
Almost five decades of information systems research into how humans interact with technology systems is underpinned by validated psychology models based on the Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviors. 7 Where a particular innovation is deemed functionally useful and endorsed by the social context, individuals will form the intention to use that technology, 8 or to continue to use a technology, 9 rather than to reject it. 10
Most companies are still at the stage of intending to use AI, considering use cases, or even wondering where to begin.
The determinants of acceptance behavior and adoption can be complex, encompassing many of the talking points of the AI revolution, such as trust, privacy, ethics, transparency, fairness and bias. All of these can have a negative impact on human behavior if sufficiently absent or poorly controlled. 11, 12 The main driver of acceptance behavior, regardless of the technology is that it must be useful for the purposes of the user.
50 Bold ideas to power progress