FOBO: Why is Gen Z sabotaging AI’s transformation at work.

Speaker A: Picture a man in a bathrobe, Paranoid, half stone, hiding in a small house in Northern California. He used to be a revolutionary, part of a radical underground group called the French 76. Now, uh, 16 years ago, he believed he was going to take the system down. But today, he's a wreck. The system kept moving, and his daughter is a teenager who barely knows what he stood for. He's an idealist who never won and who can't stop fighting a war that's already over. Now, you might be wondering who this man is. Well, he's more famous than you think. That's Leonardo DiCaprio's character in one Battle after another, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film. And as a behavioral economist by education, I can't help thinking that right now, in 2026, there is millions of professionals walking around the office in that exact bathrobe. Obviously not literally, but metaphorically. Yes, doing sincere resistance, but doomed to fail. Because there's a number that should stop you cold. A recent survey by RYTR and Workplace Intelligence found that 44% of Gen Z employees are actively sabotaging their own company's AI rollout. 44%. Some are just refusing to use the tools. Others are even feeding proprietary company data into public AI systems just to prove leadership shouldn't trust the technology. True. Sabotage from inside the building and from behind a desktop. And before you chalk it up to laziness or generational attitude, it's not. It's fear. And that fear has a name. And that we're going to explore in this episode of between youn and AI. Here's your host, Andrea Iorio speaking. I'm an Italian keynote speaker and USA Today bestselling author. Former head of Tinder Latin America for five years, Chief Digital Officer at l' Oreal Brazil, MBA professor at Funda Salon Cabrao, and columnist at MIT Technology Review and Wired Mexico. My latest book is between youn and AI, published by Wiley. You can get to know me better@AndreAyoiro.com check it out. But getting back to the topic of the episode, to that fear. That fear has a name. It's called fobo. Fear of Becoming Obsolete. It's the new fomo. Except instead of missing a party or they want a Coachella, you miss your career, your kid's college tuition, your mortgage, your professional identity. Now, the Writer and Workplace Intelligence survey is striking. 29% of employees admit to actively sabotaging their company's AI rollout. And among the Gen zers, that number jumps to 44%. Almost half half of the generation everyone assumed would be the natural champion of AI in the workplace. So pause on that. The generation that grew with smartphones in their cribs is the same generation most likely to sabotage AI at work. That sounds counterintuitive at first. So why they do that? Well, because they are the very first ones who can see clearly, no illusions, what AI is going to do to entry level white collar work. See, they graduated into a job market where the rungs of the career ladder are being sawed off in real time. And their response is not enthusiasm, it's actually resistance. And beware, that's not a generational quirk. This is nothing new. Because, I mean, pause here for a second. If you think this is the first time in history that workers have sabotaged the technology coming for their jobs, well, then you should meet the Luddites. Look, let's go back to England. In 1811, textile workers in Nottingham start smashing the recently invented mechanical looms in the middle of the night. They organized, they wore masks, and they even signed the letters Ned Ludd. Within two years, the British government deploys more troops to suppress the Luddites than they had fighting Napoleon in Spain. So let that sink in. More soldiers were used against their own factory workers than against the French army. And here's where most people get the Luddites wrong. They were not anti technology, per se. The journalist Brian Merchant, in his 2023 book, Blood in the Machine Learning, makes this really clear. The Luddites were skilled craftsmen who had spent years apprenticing in their trade. And they weren't smashing looms because they hated machines, but they were doing that because the factory owners were using those machines to break apprenticeship tradition, slash wages, and put children to work in conditions that killed them. So the Luddites weren't fighting the future. They were fighting a particular kind of future. One where the productivity gains of a new technology went entirely to capital and none, um, to its labor. So see the parallel here? Your Gen Z employee feeding proprietary data into ChatGPT to embarrass leadership. Well, is not the first person in history to do this first. They're the latest version of a pattern that's more than 215 years old. And the pattern says when workers feel the technology is being done to them instead of, uh, with them while they fight back, it. Sometimes with hammers, sometimes with laptops. But here's the brutal the Luda, it's lost. Every single time labor has tried to stop technological change through sabotage, it has lost. And the AI saboteurs of 2026 are going to lose too, for two specific reasons. Reason one is that 70. 70% of executives surveyed in the same survey say they are less likely to promote employees who refuse to use AI. 77%. The very people who decide your next race, your next title, your next stretch assignment, have already decided that AI fluency is non negotiable. So when you sabotage your company's AI rollout, you're not just protecting your career, you're actually sabotaging your career as well. So the bathrobe is on you, not on the system. Now, reason two, and this one, is more subtle. Most people who refuse to use AI uh, think they're standing still. Well, they're not. They're falling behind. And let me tell you why. You might just feel as productive as you were two years ago without using AI Uh, same output, same hours, same quality. But the problem is that, same as before, now means below average. Everyone around you has turbocharged their output with AI and your normal is now everyone else's floor. Your old A grade work is now their C grade work. And in the labor market, where layoffs are already hitting every sector A, as we've explored in episode four, below average is a very dangerous place to be. So FOBO produces exactly the behavior that creates obsolescence. Sabotage doesn't protect you. It accelerates the very things you're afraid of. It's DiCaprio in the bathrobe. Sincere resistance, but again, doomed to fail. Now, if you're a leader listening to this, here's where it gets uncomfortable. Because if 44% of your Gen Z workforce is sabotaging your AI strategy, well, that's not their failure. It's your failure. And I've spent my last year studying this and summed up in the findings of my book, between youn and AI. And the framework rests on three pillars. Cognitive, behavioral, and emotional. And what we're talking about today lives entirely in the third one, the emotional pillar, where three big skills are incited for leaders. Empathy, trust, and agency. These are exactly the three moves leaders need to make to kill sabotage at the root. And let me walk you through each one. Empathy. What you have to do. Name the fear. Out loud. Stop pretending FOBO doesn't exist in your company. And stop sending all handed email about exciting AI transformations while your people are quietly googling what jobs are safe from AI. Hold the conversation. People are already having in their hands. The first leader in your industry to publicly say, I know you're scared. Here's what we're going to do. About it is going to win the talent war for the next decade. 2. Trust. Build the AI rollout with your people, not to them. See, the Luddite's lesson is clear. When workers feel they have no voice in how the technology gets deployed, well, uh, they break it. So, co design, pilot with the team, nod on the team and share the productivity gains in compensation in time back in real, visible ways. So make it obvious that AI is not a transfer of value from labor to capital. Otherwise, you'll have hammers in your code base. And 3. Agency. Give people ownership. Let them choose which workflows they automate first. Let them be the ones who build the prompts, decide where AI gets used, and where humans stay in the driver's seat. Mandates produce sabotage. Ownership produces innovation. Yeah. It's that simple. Empathy, trust, agency. Three moves. Do them, and your AI, uh, strategy survives. Skip them. And you're gonna wake up one morning and realize that your future leaders have been quietly burning the building down from the inside while you congratulated yourself on your AI transformation roadmap. So here's the reframe I want to leave you with. See, the bathrobe, metaphorically, is contagious. And right now, 44% of your future leaders are already wearing it. For current leaders, you need empathy, um, trust, and agency. For everyone else, well, here's the honest truth. The fear is real. Fobo. Fear of being obsolete is real. But sabotage is the bathrobe, not the cure. The answer is to use AI so well, so visibly, so creatively, that you become the person leadership can't promote fast enough. Because, to be honest, in 2026, the fear. It's not fear of becoming obsolete, only. It's fear of becoming overlooked. In an AI world. It's not enough to avoid being replaced. You have to be seen. So what will it be? You want to be seen as a resistant or as an adopter? Well, I'll leave you with the choice. With that. I want to thank you so much for your attention in this episode. This was between you and AI. You can find everything about me and my work as a keynote speaker on my website, andreayaro.com. see you in the next episode with another yet episode of between you and AI.