The AI Trust Paradox at Work: Exploring Employee Ambivalence in Everyday WorkplacePractices and Decision-Making
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33152/jmphss-10.4.9Keywords:
AI trust, Employee ambivalence, Workplace AI, Trust calibration, Human–AI collaborationAbstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into workplace practices and decision-making, offering opportunities to improve efficiency while creating uncertainty regarding the accuracy, appropriateness, and accountability of AI-generated outputs. Employees may therefore rely on AI while simultaneously questioning its recommendations and limitations. This study explores how employees experience and negotiate trust in AI during their everyday workplace practices and decision-making processes. A qualitative phenomenological approach was employed to examine the lived experiences of 26 employees from diverse occupational sectors. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns in employees’ experiences, perceptions, and practices regarding AI. The findings indicate that employees neither fully trust nor reject AI. Instead, their reliance varies according to task characteristics, perceived risks, organizational demands, and professional accountability. Six empirical themes were identified and subsequently interpreted through three interconnected workplace practices: adaptive skepticism, bounded reliance, and verification. Together, these practices created a condition of functional ambivalence, in which employees recognized AI’s usefulness while remaining concerned about accuracy, overdependence, originality, critical thinking, and accountability. Verification, contextual evaluation, and selective reliance were central practices for managing uncertainty surrounding AI outputs. Trust in workplace AI is better understood as a negotiated process rather than a stable state of acceptance or rejection. Effective human–AI collaboration requires appropriate boundaries between technological assistance and human responsibility.
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