U.S. workers are growing more confident about AI at work, except Gen Z, the generation most likely to pay a career price for staying on the sidelines.
LinkedIn’s AI Confidence Index finds more professionals now say AI makes them more efficient on the job (53%, up 2 percentage points from earlier this year) and that they feel supported in building AI skills (also up 2 points). Nearly six in 10 plan to proactively learn new AI skills in the next six months.
That optimism is uneven, according to The Work Shift newsletter, Gen Z ranks last on every measure LinkedIn tracks. The widest gap is on the question with the biggest long-term stakes: just 38% of Gen Z workers plan to build AI skills in the next six months, compared with 63% of Gen Xers.
New LinkedIn research ties AI literacy to stronger outcomes for young workers, including hiring and promotions. Yet more than half of Gen Z (52%) say they are nervous about AI’s impact on their jobs — the highest share of any generation, versus 43% of millennials, 38% of Gen X and 26% of baby boomers.
Street interviews captured the split. One entrepreneur called AI “life-changing.” A lawyer called it “scary.” A Gen Z worker traced her unease to pop culture: “I grew up watching ‘Terminator.’ It gives me anxiety to say AI is ‘exciting.’”
Experts say the hesitation is less about the technology itself than about timing and uncertainty. Gen Zers have most of their careers ahead and the least clarity about what those careers will look like. They also came of age through a pandemic and a shaky job market, recruiter Heidi Breitenmoser noted, then hit a wave of AI moving at breakneck speed. “No wonder confidence is thin.”
Older workers have already lived through multiple workplace reinventions. “We’ve lived through every major workplace reinvention of the last three decades,” said Gen X public relations professional Leslie Clavin. Recessions, the internet, mobile, cloud — adapting again “doesn’t scare us. It’s just the next chapter.”
This shift also cuts differently than earlier ones. “AI is not coming for our hands like the technical revolutions before,” said behavioral scientist Michelle Rozen. Past automation mostly remade physical work; this one reaches into thinking.
Rozen, who reviewed the street interviews, cautioned that fear can also be a social script. “The social norm is to say that it’s scary.” What actually drives the reaction, she said, is comfort with risk and the unknown — which is why an entrepreneur and a lawyer can look at the same technology and land at opposite ends of the spectrum.