Public Shows Little Moral Objection to AI Taking Jobs

Image credit: Search Engine Journal

New Harvard research indicates the American public holds minimal moral objection to artificial intelligence automating search marketing jobs, challenging prevailing industry assumptions about employment security.

A study from Harvard Business School found that search marketing strategists scored 2.31 out of seven on a moral objection scale regarding AI job displacement, placing it among occupations least likely to provoke public resistance.

Assistant Professor James Riley surveyed 2,357 respondents across 940 job categories, revealing public support for fully automating 30 percent of occupations with current AI capabilities. This support increased to 58 percent with advanced AI, according to the research.

Only about 12 percent of professions, including clergy and childcare workers, generated strong moral resistance to AI automation, regardless of the AI’s sophistication.

Elisabeth Paulson and Kirk Bansak’s research at UC Berkeley suggested that public preference for human involvement over algorithms in tasks like loan approval is primarily driven by beliefs about performance, not by an inherent moral stance against AI.

Separately, research conducted at Procter & Gamble demonstrated that teams utilizing AI assistance were three times more likely to develop top-quality ideas compared to unassisted individuals, indicating AI’s growing competence in creative fields.

Experts like Raffaella Sadun, Karim Lakhani, and Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School, along with Ritcha Ranjan of Expedia Group and MIT, envision agentic AI taking on roles such as chief of staff and competitive intelligence analyst with minimal human oversight, starting with repetitive tasks.

Source: Search Engine Journal