Entanglement-AI

Chapter 6: Threat Avoidance or Opportunity Chasing?

Chapter 6, “Threat Avoidance or Opportunity Chasing?”, explores how individuals perceive and adopt increasingly sophisticated AI technologies in the workplace. It argues that traditional technology acceptance models provide insufficient insight in explaining intelligent technologies such as AI, which triggers complex psycho-social factors like fear, anxiety, and mistrust.

The chapter introduces Technology Threat Avoidance Theory (TTAT) and the Coping Model of User Adoption (CMUA) to explain how individuals either “chase opportunities” or “avoid threats” when confronted with new AI. It defines three levels of AI adoption that confronts organizations today:
• AI Acceptance: Passive use of basic AI technology as a tool.
• AI Collaboration: Proactive partnership with more sophisticated AI systems for collaborative decision making.
• AI Co-creation: Active participation in designing and developing AI systems.

Comparative research on professionals in Europe, the USA, and India revealed a steady decline in willingness to adopt AI as its sophistication increases. These responses were categorized into three clusters:
• Positive: Motivated by personal contribution, influence, and professional growth.
• Neutral: Expressed both positive views and concerns about implementation challenges, AI readiness, and business disruption, along with some fear of job loss.
• Negative: Primarily focused on fear of job loss, disinterest, resistance, and skepticism about AI’s capabilities.

Crucially, these attitudes were found to be universal; there was no statistically significant differences across gender, age, education, or geography, suggesting deeper socio-cognitive-emotive factors are at play. The chapter concludes that organizations must embrace human complexity and address these diverse perceptions to ensure successful AI implementation and foster human-centric systems, rather than simply mandating AI adoption.

The implications of this research are that if current industry challenges regarding limited returns on investment from AI technologies are prevalent today, then this may be exacerbated with the introduction of more sophisticated AI technologies in the future. Individual cognitive and behavioural responses such as threat avoidance and opportunity chasing are shaped by a perception of personal power and resources. An understanding of these drivers will enable organizations and developers to recalibrate their processes to produce improved and effective socio-technical systems and practices, and better outcomes for society as a whole.