Charter survey finds executives trust AI over own judgment twice as often as staff

A survey released Wednesday by Charter, a workplace research and media company, found that executives are twice as likely as individual contributors to trust artificial intelligence over their own judgment. The report indicates that 32.8% of executives said they trust AI more than their own judgment, compared with 16.3% of individual contributors. This disparity also appears among managers, with 34.8% reporting higher trust in AI than in their own judgment.

The study, conducted in August, polled 5,002 U.S. office workers at companies with at least 100 employees who reported using AI at work. The sample included 2,952 individual contributors, 1,547 managers and 503 executives, a group that encompassed vice presidents, C-suite members, owners and founders. The findings highlight a pattern of cognitive offloading, which the source defines as using tools like AI to lower mental effort.

The report's coauthors noted that senior leaders are engaging in this behavior more than any other group, despite possessing the most experience. Brian Elliott, a former Slack executive and executive-in-residence at Charter who co-wrote the report, attributed this behavior to the pressure executives face to provide rapid answers. He stated that AI supports a "seldom wrong, never in doubt" tendency among some leaders, allowing them to appear smart and quick. Elliott noted that if executives feel they must fake competence, AI feeds those tendencies.

Elliott described instances where tech executives use AI to build product prototypes over a weekend and then expect teams to quickly convert them into functioning products without appreciating the complexity involved. He argued that while AI excels at providing executive summaries, it is often less effective at providing the specific answers to immediate problems faced by individual contributors.

The survey results also touched on the broader impact of AI in the workplace. Overall, the findings were positive regarding AI's potential, with 42.7% of AI users stating it improved both their work and personal lives. However, the researchers identified a key tension for workers: the threat of job loss. In separate qualitative interviews with 91 workers, the team observed that as employees become more proficient with AI, they increasingly realize how much work can be done without them, creating a "persistent tension." Elliott contrasted this with the executive experience, stating that the odds of an AI CEO taking over a company are "excruciatingly low," suggesting executives remain mostly free from that specific anxiety.

The survey measures self-reported trust in AI but does not track whether executives actually follow AI advice when making consequential decisions.