The Pulse
IBM Study Finds 60% of Employees Fear AI Skills Erosion
An IBM Institute for Business Value study finds that 60% of employees worry AI is eroding their skills, with critical thinking cited most often. The survey also shows a gap between what CHROs say workers need and the skills employees priori
AI.info Team ·
Sixty percent of employees worry that artificial intelligence is eroding their skills, with critical thinking cited most often as the capability in decline, according to a new IBM Institute for Business Value study. The finding points to a widening gap between how companies expect people to work with AI and how employees experience its effect on their jobs.
IBM surveyed 8,800 full-time employees in 28 countries and 1,500 chief human resource officers and equivalent senior executives across 21 geographies and 23 industries. The surveys, conducted with Oxford Economics from April through June 2026, examine how organizations are redesigning work as AI moves into routine decisions and business processes.
Employees and CHROs disagree on the skill that matters most
Seventy-one percent of CHROs identify the ability to supervise, validate and override AI outputs as the workforce’s most essential skill. Only 29% of employees rank judgment as important, exposing a sharp difference between executive expectations and employee priorities.
Critical thinking and problem framing rank among the skills considered most important by 49% of employees and 57% of CHROs. Skills erosion also ranks among the leading concerns for CHROs, cited by 46% of those surveyed.
Among employees who worry about erosion, three out of four say AI has already begun to weaken at least some of their skills. IBM’s release presents those findings as reported employee experience rather than as a controlled measurement of declining performance.
AI creates work that employees say often goes unseen
The study describes a second tension around productivity. Eighty percent of CHROs believe AI adoption creates “invisible” work, including checking recommendations, correcting mistakes, supplying missing context and handling exceptions. Forty-two percent of employees say AI increases their workload or that their added work goes unrecognized.
IBM also found that 42% of CHROs say productivity gains from AI are primarily reinvested in innovation or reskilling. The finding suggests that the effect of automation depends partly on what organizations do with the time and capacity AI creates, rather than simply on how many tasks a system can complete.
“AI is changing not only how work gets done, but where people can contribute the greatest value,” said Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s senior vice president and chief human resources officer. “As AI takes on more routine and process-driven tasks, uniquely human capabilities become even more important. CHROs have a critical role to play in redesigning the workplace of the future so people can focus on the areas where they can have the greatest impact.”
Nickle LaMoreaux, senior vice president and chief human resources officer, IBM
Accountability shapes whether workers challenge AI
Employees also report uncertainty about responsibility when AI systems fail. Forty-three percent say blame falls on them when something goes wrong with AI, while 41% of CHROs believe employees may not feel safe challenging or overriding AI outputs.
Only 28% of CHROs report having a joint AI roadmap with IT supported by a shared operating cadence, and 73% say they struggle to coordinate consistently across the C-suite. IBM says 36% of CHROs identify unclear accountability as an obstacle to AI deployment.
The survey links decision rights to employee confidence. Where judgment is built into the way work is organized, 62% of CHROs report rising employee confidence in AI-enabled decisions. Where judgment is not built in, 57% report declining confidence.
HR is being asked to lead while adoption lags
Nearly half of organizations, or 46%, do not involve the CHRO when AI strategy is defined. Inside HR departments themselves, 72% of organizations make limited or no use of AI, according to the study.
CHROs rate their organizations’ HR capabilities particularly low in AI literacy across the team, at 13%; AI performance measurement, at 16%; and change management for AI adoption, at 20%. Organizations with mature HR AI capabilities, including governance, architecture and measurement, are nearly twice as likely to report a higher number of positive business performance indicators.
IBM’s findings put the practical dispute in clear terms: companies want employees to judge and challenge machine output, while many employees say the same systems are adding hidden work and weakening the skills needed to make those judgments. The study’s 60% figure measures concern, not proof that AI has caused a broad decline in critical thinking, but it identifies a workforce problem companies will have to address as they assign more decisions to software.