David Rice

Trust Crisis: The Cultural Fault Lines Behind America’s AI Anxiety America's AI trust gap isn't about technology. It's about decades of broken promises from the institutions now deploying it.

And that track record is decades of broken promises, wage stagnation, and power consolidation.

New piece on what American AI anxiety actually reveals about trust, power, and the institutions that have spent 30 years burning the social contract.
peoplemanagingpeople.com/workforce-ma...

Every executive deck frames this as a literacy problem. As if better training, more communication and demos will fix it.

But workers aren't evaluating the technology. They're evaluating the track record of the institutions deploying it.

Americans aren't afraid of AI. They're afraid of the people who control it.

That difference explains why trust in company-provided AI dropped 31% in two months. Why trust in autonomous AI systems collapsed 89% in the same window. Why workers reject AI at three times the rate they embrace it.

Workers Are Ready for AI Agents—But Organizations Aren’t, Creating "AI Limbo" 78% of workers expect AI agents within a year, but training and governance lag, according to People Managing People.

Full report here. Two surveys. Two perspectives. One growing gap that organizations need to close before trust erodes further.

peoplemanagingpeople.com/learning-dev...

Workers and leaders agree on one thing: AI agents should assist, not lead. Only 12% of HR pros expect agents in leadership decisions. The alignment exists. The infrastructure doesn't.

Only 16% of HR professionals completely trust AI agents for those same tasks. 44% of workers have received zero training. 16% of HR teams say nobody owns AI agent oversight yet.

66% of workers feel positive about AI. 78% expect AI agents at their org by end of 2026. 74% would trust one to handle repetitive admin tasks. The appetite is there.

We surveyed 1,000 workers and 379 #HR professionals about #AI agents in the workplace. The gap between what employees are ready for and what organizations have prepared them for is significant. We're calling it AI Limbo. 🧵

47% rate company leadership as moderately effective or worse. 35% say HR is barely valued or not valued at all.
The people closest to workforce strategy are telling leaders something. Are they listening? Might be a factor on why anxiety is so high amongst these folks.

58% say their workload grew last year. Half handle functions outside HR entirely. 40% report high or extreme stress.

Organizations keep loading administrative work onto HR, then wonder why the function doesn't contribute strategically. The trap is by design even if it's not on purpose.

HRCI's new State of HR report surveyed 4,583 professionals. The number that should bother executives most: When HR operates strategically, 90% feel valued by leadership. When it's administrative, 43%.Only 10% of HR pros consider themselves essential strategic leaders. 🧵

AI Super Bowl Ads Tell Their Own Story About Industry Priorities AI Super Bowl ads cost $100M+ to sell consumer tools while ignoring enterprise transformation. Here's what it means for you.

Those #AI Super Bowl ads said something about the priorities of tech companies. Unsurprisingly, they're not interested in solving problems that actually matter. Especially the problems of business leaders struggling with transformation.

peoplemanagingpeople.com/workforce-ma...

Is Your AI Strategy Already Obsolete? Your AI strategy may already be out of touch with your organizational reality. Here's your guide to alignment.

Leaders who are still talking about AI strategy and worrying about governance are so far behind what their organizational reality already is, the question of how to catch up is hard to answer.

peoplemanagingpeople.com/hr-strategy/...

AI Premium Pay Problems: Why More Salary for AI Skills Could Backfire The AI wage premium is real and has the potential to create real problems for business leaders who handle it incorrectly.

Paying 56% more for AI skills sounds smart until everyone has them.

Prompt engineering: $375K salaries in 2023 → "second to last" priority for new hires in 2025.

Your compensation strategy should support transformation, not chase market premiums that won't last.

This is your regular reminder that you don't own your #AI tools. You rent them.

Build accordingly.

Goes a little something like this:

Day 1: "Don't worry, nothing will change"
Month 3: "Exciting integration updates!"
Month 6: "Please migrate to Microsoft AI Suite™"
Month 9: Your custom prompts don't work anymore
Month 12: You're explaining your entire company to Clippy's AI grandchild.

POV: You just spent 6 months training your team on #Claude, building custom prompts, integrating it into every workflow.

Then Microsoft acquires Anthropic tomorrow.

Time person of the year cover for 2025

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

The #panamaplaylist thing is a little creepy, but... not nearly as creepy as the depth of psychosis you'd have to be in to listen to that Long Way Home song by Gareth Emery 60 times in a row. 60! It sounds like the music an out of touch CEO unveils a tone deaf product to. It's atrociously corporate.

One of the most effective ways to make your resume stand out that I've seen lol.

Just have to pass the loyalty tests.

Understand the Impact of a Layoff—Before You Act Understanding the impact of a layoff can be difficult. We've developed this layoff impact analyzer to help you see the ripple effects.

the impact of a #RIF. I embedded it in a short post on our site. Complete an anonymous survey at the start and that's the only time I'm collecting any data you enter into this. But I'd like to know what folks think of the tool. Designed for #hr leaders.

peoplemanagingpeople.com/hr-strategy/...

#Layoffs are going on everywhere. Leaders are rushing in to layoffs to cut costs and hand things over to #AI where they can. But it doesn't always work out how they'd like. Leaders need to plot a course to the future carefully. So I created a thought exercise in the form of a tool to help analyze

The story of 2025. The year we sold ourselves short. The amount of layoffs by years end will be staggering at this rate. Retail leaders are going to want to start strategizing now how to cope, cause Christmas is probably not going to be the get out of jail card this year.

I have to be in LinkedIn as part of my job. But my god, the platform is just filled with volumes of absolute bullshit. Could do without it most days if I'm honest.

Corporate Astrology or Secret Weapon? Why Top Recruiters Still Swear By Personality Tests Personality tests divide opinion. The question among hire teams is: are you using the right one? Find out with this quiz!

peoplemanagingpeople.com/topics/organ...

It's not an unpopular view, but when you talk to #hiring professionals, they often feel personality assessments provide some value. So what say you? We've got an anonymous survey for #HR and #recruiting professionals and a quiz to match you to a better assessment based on what you're hiring for.

Karine Olszowy, Future of Work, Senior Lead at Amadeus.

“We need to be really intentional in how we use AI. Not using it to do more but using it to create space to think and problem solve. That’s where we’re going to find innovation.”

More of this from leaders please.

Goes on to say.. “I know people who walk around with a mic in their jacket, always on, so if they die, the AI has the data to build the best possible representation of them possible.”

“To start a company, you have to be f*%#ing crazy.” -Howard Lerman CEO and Founder of Roam. Not saying he’s wrong but… Why do founders always sound like this? 😂 I can’t wait for AI to mimic this kind of persona.