The anxiety of artificial intelligence (AI) replacing humans is haunting employees across the globe. But, besides worrying about job losses due to the advancements in technology, workers have a new fear.
Employees are losing sleep over becoming irrelevant at their workplaces amid rapid AI developments. This fear has a name, FOBO: the fear of becoming obsolete.
Let’s dive deeper.
What is FOBO?
The fear of becoming obsolete closely follows the AI revolution. Workers have started to dread that AI advances are outpacing their reskilling, which will make them redundant in the workplace.
A previous Gallup survey of American workers found that 22 per cent of respondents were worried about their jobs becoming obsolete because of technology, a jump from 15 per cent in 2021.
The fear of becoming obsolete in the workplace due to AI has reached such heights that some workers are even ready to trade pay increases to upskill themselves.
According to a report from Mercer, as many as 63 per cent of employees worldwide are willing to let go of a 10 per cent pay hike for an opportunity to improve their AI and digital skills.
The report from the human-resources consulting firm also found that four in 10 workers say one of their biggest fears about their future work plans is AI-driven job losses.
How real is workers’ AI fear?
Last year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could eliminate 50 per cent of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.
As per the Mercer report, a whopping 99 per cent of executives polled said AI will lead to some workplace reductions within two years.
However, the uncertainty over how, exactly, AI will affect jobs and work continues.
A new study from MIT sheds some light on the pace of this technology creeping into the labour market. “Rather than arriving in crashing waves that transform a certain set of tasks at a time,” the researchers wrote, “progress typically resembles a rising tide, with widespread gains across many tasks simultaneously.”
Despite the big talk of upheaval in the job market, AI adoption by businesses has been slow.
Citing Census Bureau data in their March 2026 AI Adoption Tracker, Goldman Sachs economists Sarah Dong and Joseph Briggs said that fewer than 19 per cent of American establishments have adopted AI. They forecast that this adoption will reach only 22.3 per cent over the next six months, reported Fortune.
For anxious workers, the MIT researchers wrote: “Workers are likely to have some visibility into these changes, rather than facing discontinuous jumps in AI-driven automation.”
The AI revolution is here, improving the productivity of employees.
“We continue to observe large impacts on labour productivity in the limited areas where generative AI has been deployed,” according to Goldman’s economists. “Academic studies imply a 23 per cent average uplift to productivity, while company anecdotes imply slightly larger efficiency gains of around 33 per cent.”
Although AI is saving time by accelerating daily tasks, it is not fundamentally changing how the work gets done, Keith Spencer, career expert at job-search automation platform Sonara, told MarketWatch. Until this happens, those time savings may not reflect in revenue or margins.
“AI is largely being layered onto existing work rather than fundamentally redesigning workflows,” Spencer said, pointing out that many workers are using it to draft emails or presentations, summarise information, analyse data or automate monotonous administrative tasks.
“Completing tasks faster doesn’t automatically mean a company or team is suddenly producing more products or serving more customers,” he noted, which would have a more significant impact on revenue.
There is one sphere where AI is rapidly improving: performing text-based labour market tasks at a slightly adequate quality level.
Citing the findings of researchers at MIT FutureTech, Fortune reported that AI systems are likely to complete most text-based tasks with 80 per cent to 95 per cent success rates by 2029 at a minimally acceptable quality level. For the majority of survey tasks, which humans complete in a few hours, the projected 2029 success rate stands at 90 per cent.
What can employers do?
While companies are in a frenzy to adopt AI, they are not helping their employees catch up to future technological needs.
Only about one-third of workers say their employer is offering adequate AI training, guidance, or reskilling opportunities, a nearly 10 percentage points dip from 2024, according to research from workforce nonprofit JFF.
Most employers are not providing the infrastructure to workers to deal with their FOBO. There is a wide gap between employees using AI and those who resist it.
Enterprise workers who use AI are recapturing 40 to 60 minutes per day, according to OpenAI enterprise data from last December, reported Fortune. About 75 per cent say they can now finish tasks they previously could not do at all.
Ravin Jesuthasan, a renowned future-of-work expert, told Business Insider, “Just giving people access to ChatGPT won’t get you a return.” He said that adoption rates are usually low when workers are just handed a tool.
Jesuthasan suggested that companies should make all training compulsory and set aside time for learning during the workday to encourage participation.
He noted that more senior workers could be more affected by FOBO. These employees are likely to delegate tasks to a secretary or team rather than AI. To bridge the age gap in AI learning, Jesuthasan called for “reverse mentoring,” where more mature workers collaborate with younger employees who may be more skilled in modern technology.
But it all eventually boils down to people motivating themselves to avoid becoming irrelevant, the future-of-work expert said.
“Every one of us has to really force ourselves to be curious,” he said. “The company can provide resources. The company can provide the space for reskilling and upskilling, but the individual really has to bring the impetus for change.”
The bottom line is: AI is here and it is here to stay. We can either adapt to the technology and use it as a tool or let it replace us.