HR leaders, employees ready to take instructions from robots: Study

Employees are ready to take instructions from robots at work, but organisations are not doing enough to help their staff embrace artificial intelligence (AI), says a study.

The study conducted by Oracle and Future Workplace, that covered 1,320 US HR leaders and employees, found that 93 per cent of the respondents would trust orders from a robot at work.

The study 'AI at Work' identified a large gap between the way people are using AI at home and at work.

While 70 per cent of people said they are using some form of AI in their personal life, only 24 per cent of employees are currently using some form of AI at work.

"Despite all the talk about people being worried about AI entering the workplace, the study found the opposite to be true with 79 per cent of HR leaders; 60 per cent of employees believing a failure to adopt AI will have negative consequences on their own careers, colleagues and overall organisation," it said.

Moreover, from an organisational standpoint, respondents believe embracing AI will have the most positive impact on directors and C-Suite executives. By failing to empower leadership teams with AI, organisations could lose a competitive advantage, it added.

As per the study, some of the factors that are acting as major barriers to AI adoption in the enterprise include skill-gap, cost and security risks.

"To help employees embrace AI, organisations should partner with their HR leaders to address the skill gap and focus their IT strategy on embedding simple and powerful AI innovations into existing business processes," said Emily He, SVP, Human Capital Management Cloud Business Group, Oracle.