Employees in experiments were less likely to be trusted by supervisors when those supervisors knew AI had been used, even though the work’s quality was not part of their judgement. The finding, reported by Futurism, puts a measurable wrinkle in workplace AI adoption: using the tool may affect how colleagues view the person using it.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
Futurism reports on a study published in The Leadership Quarterly, led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers Samuel Meyers and Yochanan Bigman. In a series of experiments, supervisors judged whether to trust an employee’s report and were told whether AI had been used, but were not asked to base their judgement on the work’s quality.
Employees who had not used AI had a 68 per cent chance of earning supervisors’ trust in the experiments. When supervisors knew AI had been used, that figure fell to 24 per cent. Bigman said the results suggest that AI adoption is also a psychological and managerial challenge, not just a technological one.
Why it matters
The numbers point to a tension for workplaces encouraging AI use: staff may be judged differently for using the very tools their employers want them to adopt. That could affect whether people disclose AI use, and whether managers distinguish between the method and the quality of the work.
The reported experiment measured supervisors’ trust judgements. It does not, on the evidence provided, show that real-world promotion decisions changed or establish how the results translate across jobs and workplaces.
Our read
If a tool is meant to improve work, penalising its use without considering the result is a poor way to judge either the employee or the tool. Employers should make clear when AI use is acceptable and assess the work itself, rather than treating disclosure as a proxy for competence. The harder question is whether transparent AI use can earn trust when the label alone appears to count against people.
What to watch
- Whether the published study explains how the experiments were designed and how broadly the results may apply.
- Whether later research finds similar effects in actual workplaces and across different kinds of work.
- Whether employers spell out how AI use should be disclosed and evaluated.
Discussion spark: Should managers judge AI-assisted work on its quality, or is knowing that AI was used relevant enough to affect trust?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (7 November 2026, 16:50 UTC)
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