Gen Z Is Losing Faith in AI—and That’s a Serious Problem for Employers

Gen-Z gets slapped with many labels, some ringing more true than others, but we can definitely all agree these youngsters are incredibly tech-savvy. As the first digital native generation, they live and breathe tech—from smartphones to gaming consoles, social media, instant messaging and more. Plenty of reports have also suggested that Gen-Z are leading the charge when it comes to AI, with basically “everyone” using it to help their way through college. So what does it mean when a new study reveals that Gen-Z are now growing wary about this revolutionary innovation? It means trouble. Trouble that might play into your company’s AI plans.

According to new data from polling giant Gallup, over half of U.S. Gen-Z-ers use AI regularly,  and fully 52 percent of K-12 students think they’ll have to know AI for their postsecondary education—neatly matching the whole digitally-native narrative. But Gallup’s data also shows that Gen-Z’s feelings about the tech are “souring,” the New York Times wrote. The data says that the share of survey respondents aged 14 to 29 who said they’re “hopeful” about AI has slipped sharply since 2025. It’s now just 18 percent, versus last year’s 27 percent. As well as hopefulness, “excitement” levels about AI have fallen too. And almost one in three agreed AI actually made them feel “angry.”

More interestingly, 48 percent said that they believe the “risks of AI in the workforce outweigh its benefits,” an 11 percentage point rise over last year’s figure. Essentially this means half of the generation for whom tech is as natural a part of life as sliced bread think that it may actually be more dangerous to use this technology at work than to not use it. That’s an astonishingly negative stance. 

The Times cites youngsters’ AI worries centering around the threat to entry level jobs and the risk of AI eventually encroaching on careers that they’d been aiming at during their studies. Other concerns include erosion of interaction between humans and rising AI-generated misinformation on social media.

Another report, fresh from an expert on the famous business-centric Lenny’s Podcast, suggests a different reason some may be souring on AI at work.

Simon Willison, a two-decades software engineering veteran and technology advocate, said on the podcast that while he’s embraced AI, and it has helped speed up aspects of his work, sometimes the tech just makes him feel tired out. “Using coding agents well is taking every inch of my 25 years of experience as a software engineer,” he said, adding that it’s “mentally exhausting.” 

The software expert said that managing AI agents to help him work can involve hiring “up four agents in parallel and have them work on four different problems,” which taps directly into that famed AI productivity boost. But he added “by 11 a.m., I am wiped out for the day,” Business Insider noted. Willison also explained that AI is creating a type of productivity-anxiety loop, noting that he’d “talked to a lot of people who are losing sleep because they’re like, ‘My agents could be doing work for me, I’m just going to stay up an extra half-hour’.”