Tech workers are most at risk of being displaced by AI at their jobs, but paradoxically, they seem to be the most willing to embrace AI at work.
According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Flash Poll on trust and artificial intelligence, 55% of technology industry employees say they embrace AI in the workplace, the highest acceptance rate among all industries surveyed. This stands in stark contrast to the 15% who reject it, creating a net positive sentiment gap of 40 percentage points.
The enthusiasm drops significantly in other sectors. Financial services workers show the second-highest acceptance at 43%, followed by retail at 35% and manufacturing at 33%. Healthcare workers demonstrate more ambivalence, with 28% embracing AI while 31% reject it, resulting in a negative sentiment gap of 3 percentage points.
The most resistant industries tell a different story. Education, food and beverage, and transportation sectors all show net negative attitudes toward workplace AI. Education workers are split, with 25% embracing AI but 35% rejecting it, creating a gap of negative 10 percentage points. Food and beverage employees show similar resistance at negative 12 percentage points (23% embrace vs. 35% reject), while transportation workers are the most skeptical with a negative 15-point gap (20% embrace vs. 35% reject).
The survey, which polled over 5,000 respondents across five countries including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Germany, reveals a clear industry divide in AI acceptance. The pattern suggests that workers in more digitally native industries are more comfortable with AI integration, while those in service-oriented and physical sectors remain wary of the technology’s implications for their work.
The results are also interesting, because AI is likely to impact white-collar jobs a lot more than other kinds of work in the near term. But most white-collar workers seem to realize this, and are looking to embrace AI so as to not become irrelevant. At the moment, AI isn’t very useful for F&B and transportation jobs, and this seems to drive greater skepticism among those sectors at using it in the workplace.