AI Anxiety: The New Psychosocial Hazard

Rapid innovation has always come with growing pains, but the speed and scale of change brought about by AI—especially agentic and generative forms—presents a whole new psychosocial challenge for teams.

Workers are reporting the impact in real time:

38% of employees fear AI-related job loss

Over half report emotional exhaustion, burnout, and psychological strain

And it’s not just the presence of AI—it’s the way organisations introduce, communicate, and support teams through change that determines the outcome.

AI adoption has been shown to indirectly increase burnout via job stress, particularly when teams lack clarity, support or a sense of agency. When self-efficacy in AI learning is low, these effects worsen.

Meanwhile, agentic AI—that is, autonomous systems that take initiative and make decisions without human prompting—introduces a subtle but serious emotional burden:

The sense of being watched

A lack of control over task flow

And increased cognitive load from learning how to work with “thinking” systems

If that weren’t enough, mental health support structures aren’t keeping up. Leaders are often unaware of these risks until the damage is done.

It’s why I advocate for recognising AI disruption as a psychosocial hazard. Not to be feared, but to be navigated deliberately.

As always, our Better Teams Take-Off framework takes an emotional temperature of the team, mentors the leader, and surfaces the unspoken tension before it becomes disengagement or attrition.

The takeaway: Rapid change needs emotionally intelligent leadership. And AI is accelerating the pace of change faster than many teams can psychologically absorb.