When it comes to AI, employees around the world have a range of sentiments. Senior Partner Lareina Yee talks to Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners about the four personas of AI sentiment that Reid introduces in his book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future: Doomers, Gloomers, Bloomers, and Zoomers. While every group says they are familiar with gen AI, Yee notes that a McKinsey survey found that among respondents, Gloomers and Bloomers make up a similar share of the workplace, while Doomers are a clear minority.
Image description:
A set of area circles displays US employee sentiment on gen AI, categorized by 4 archetypes: Doomer, Gloomer, Bloomer, and Zoomer. Each circle contains a figure representing the percentage of respondents within each archetype who agree with a specific statement regarding gen AI. The statements are: “Has extensive familiarity with gen AI,” “Has at least some familiarity with gen AI,” “Is comfortable using results from gen AI,” “Believes gen AI will have a net benefit in the next 5 years,” “Plans to use gen AI more in their personal life,” and “Expects 30% of workflows to change in the next year.”
The area circles visually represent the varying levels of agreement across the 4 archetypes for the different statements. For instance, in the statement “Has extensive familiarity with gen AI,” the percentage of agreement ranges from 16% for the Doomer archetype to 67% for the Zoomer archetype. Similar variations in agreement percentages are observed across all 6 statements for each archetype, with Doomers generally less than all others and Zoomers generally the most. A final set of smaller pie charts at the bottom shows the share of respondents in each archetype group, demonstrating the proportional representation of each archetype within the overall survey sample.
Note: This image description was completed with the assistance of Writer, a gen AI tool.
Source: McKinsey US employee survey, Oct–Nov 2024 (n = 3,002).
End of image description.
To explore the learning module, see “Understanding AI sentiments and encouraging experimentation,” February 18, 2025.