60% of Workers Fear AI Is Eroding Their Critical Thinking Skills

Skills erosion anxiety rises as AI adoption accelerates

Six in ten employees globally now worry that artificial intelligence is degrading their professional capabilities, with critical thinking cited most frequently as the skill in decline, according to new research from the IBM Institute for Business Value released September 21, 2026.

The study, which surveyed 1,500 chief human resources officers and 8,800 employees across 28 countries, exposes a significant gap between what HR leaders consider essential AI-era skills and what workers themselves prioritize. While 71% of CHROs identify the ability to supervise, validate, and override AI outputs as the workforce's most critical capability, only 29% of employees rank judgment as important.

Among employees concerned about skills erosion, three-quarters report AI has already begun diminishing at least some of their abilities. Both groups agree on one point: critical thinking matters more than ever, cited by 57% of CHROs and 49% of employees as among the most important skills for AI-enabled work.

Why it matters

This research reveals a dangerous misalignment at a pivotal moment. As organizations race to deploy AI, they risk undermining the very human capabilities—judgment, critical thinking, problem framing—that become more valuable as machines handle routine tasks. The disconnect between leadership perception and employee experience suggests many companies are implementing AI without adequately preparing their workforce or redesigning work to preserve essential cognitive skills. The exclusion of nearly half of CHROs from AI strategy discussions compounds this risk, leaving workforce implications as an afterthought rather than a design principle.

Accountability gaps create employee vulnerability

The study identifies troubling patterns around responsibility when AI systems fail. Forty-three percent of employees report that blame falls on them when something goes wrong with AI, while 41% of CHROs believe employees may not feel safe challenging or overriding AI outputs.

Organizations that clearly define workflows as human-led, AI-assisted, or AI-executed report achieving 18% risk reduction and 20% quality improvement. Yet coordination remains elusive: only 28% of CHROs report having a joint roadmap with IT backed by shared operating rhythms, and 73% say they struggle to coordinate consistently across the C-suite.

Where CHROs share responsibility for determining which decisions remain human-led, 76% of employees feel safe questioning or overriding AI recommendations—compared with just 43% where HR plays only an advisory role.

HR lags in its own AI adoption

Despite being expected to lead AI transformation, the HR function itself shows limited AI maturity. Seventy-two percent of organizations make limited or no use of AI inside the HR function itself.

CHROs rate their own teams particularly low in AI literacy (13%), AI performance measurement (16%), and change management for AI adoption (20%). Organizations with mature HR AI capability—including governance, architecture, and measurement—are nearly twice as likely to report positive business outcomes.

Eighty percent of CHROs acknowledge that AI adoption creates "invisible" work for employees, including validating recommendations, fixing mistakes, providing context, and managing exceptions. Forty-two percent of employees say AI increases their workload or that their work goes unrecognized.

"As AI takes on more routine and process-driven tasks, uniquely human capabilities become even more important," said Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM's chief human resources officer. "CHROs have a critical role to play in redesigning the workplace of the future so people can focus on the areas where they can have the greatest impact."

The findings were first reported by IBM and conducted in collaboration with Oxford Economics from April to June 2026.