I am sabotaging my company’s AI mandate. Am I alone?

Dear Chatty,

My company mandates that we use AI to save time. AI doesn’t save time. I can write something myself faster than I can de-sloppify what AI spits out. If I refuse to use AI, am I a saboteur or a realist?

 ~ Sandbagging in Syracuse

Dear Sandbagging,

Technically, you’re a saboteur. But you’re also a realist. Both things can be true, and for a lot of employees, they are.

Opposing an AI mandate by either passively sidestepping it or actively derailing it is happening more than company leaders realize. According to a study of 2,400 knowledge workers by Writer/Workplace Intelligence, 29% of employees admit to intentionally undermining their company’s AI rollout. Among Gen Z workers, that jumps to 44%.

Your situation is common among members of the AI resistance. Saboteurs often cite a belief that AI adds to their workload instead of reducing it as a reason to push back. Other common reasons are that it diminishes their value and, of course, threatens their job security.

Given these data points, it seems pretty straightforward for company leaders to blame employees for doomed AI rollouts. But zoom out, and it’s not the individual employees at fault. It’s the rollout itself. Employees are being set up to fail when leadership hands down a tool and calls it a strategy.

So are employees who don’t comply with AI mandates saboteurs or realists? When there’s no strategy behind the mandate, what they really are is guinea pigs.

~ Chatty

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Dear Chatty is an advice column for AI and content dilemmas from Kristen Kent at Evergreen Content Ops. Clear answers. No panic. No BS.