Workers That Use AI are More Concerned it Will Take Over Jobs, Phoenix Center Finds
Heavy AI users are 10 percentage points more likely to worry about their own job than light users are
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2026 – Workers who use artificial intelligence are the most likely to think the technology is coming for their own jobs, an analysis from the Phoenix Center finds.
Heavy AI users are roughly 10 percentage points more likely to convert general fear of AI to their own job security, the analysis found. Chief Economist George S. Ford explained that heavy AI users are likely to be more worried about their own jobs because they are more aware of AI’s capabilities.
The analysis cites Wave 119 of a Pew Research Trend poll that says roughly 75 percent of Americans expect AI to have a major impact on work, with about 33 percent of Americans thinking AI will impact their own work.
“The workers that have actually worked with AI are not talking themselves out of the risk – they are talking themselves into it.” Ford wrote in the analysis. “The best equipped persons to dismiss AI as a spectacle do not; experience moves them toward substance, and toward substance for themselves.”
Ford theorizes that the results are a future indication that as AI diffuses through the workplace, concern is likely to continue growing.
The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy is a Washington, D.C.- based non-profit think tank that provides economic and legal analyses of public policy, law and regulatory issues.
