According to a study conducted by the management consultancy Horváth, which was reported by the business magazine “Capital” German and international businesses anticipate that their employees risk losing significant competencies due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI). A substantial 74 percent of respondents agreed that using AI tools might cause employees to “forget how to think independently and begin to rely blindly on the answers provided”.
The survey polled executives in 200 companies spanning Germany, the USA, and the Nordic countries, confirming a fundamental challenge facing many organizations: while AI promises boosts in productivity, there are serious questions about how to maintain existing human expertise and learned skills within the workforce.
Skepticism is particularly high within the service sector, where the survey found that 85 percent of respondents expect a decline in employee competence. In contrast, the manufacturing industry shows significantly less fear, especially since many tasks there have historically been more challenging for AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Claude, to take over.
Despite this, executives in the industrial and manufacturing sectors are also notably hesitant about the overall value of AI. Only slightly over half of these leaders reported that their companies are successfully generating a “measurable and quantifiable benefit” from digitalization measures.