Managing insider threats as AI divides workers

As organisations increasingly commit to its use, AI is making many employees uneasy in the workplace, thereby creating a potential insider threat, says security expert Tim Slattery GAICD.

A recent Melbourne Business School-KPMG global study on trust in AI has found half of Australians use it regularly, but only 36 per cent are willing to trust it, with 78 per cent concerned about negative outcomes. Australia also ranks among the lowest globally on AI acceptance, excitement and optimism. Only 30 per cent of Australians believe the benefits of AI outweigh the risks, the lowest ranking of any country. Australians also trail in realising AI benefits — 55 per cent compared with  73 per cent globally.

In May, Microsoft announced it planned to cut about three per cent of its global workforce as part of a much bigger and more unsettling story — the quiet rise of AI-induced job disruption. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that AI now writes up to 30 per cent of code on some projects, with CTO Kevin Scott predicting that could hit 95 per cent by 2030.

Also in May, US-based online education company Chegg announced it would cut about 22 per cent of its workforce, acknowledging that free AI tools were eroding its business.

Insider threat

The uncertainties that stem from AI can provoke an insider threat response in the workplace. Shaw and Sellers’ (2015) widely accepted model Critical Pathway to Insider Risk shows that one of the four steps to becoming an insider threat is personal, professional and financial stressors. AI has become a workplace stressor.

In March 2025, a survey by AI startup Writer found that among malicious insiders who admitted to sabotaging their company’s AI initiative, 30 per cent said AI diminishes their value or creativity, while 28 per cent said they didn’t want AI to take their job and the AI they were using at work was low-quality with too many security issues.

Writer’s report goes to the heart of AI in the workplace — it can act as a trigger for insider threat activity.

Sabotage as a response to technology isn’t new. In Britain, during the Napoleonic Wars, the Luddite movement emerged in textile mills as a reaction to harsh economic times and a rise in difficult working conditions born of the Industrial Revolution. Today, a “Luddite” is seen as someone who finds it difficult to deal with modern technology. But in the early 1800s, Luddites were neither opposed to technology nor inept at using it. Many were highly skilled machine operators in the textile industry, worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines.

More than 200 years later, we face the same technology perceptions, problems and fears suffered by the Luddites who, when they smashed machines, became insider threats.

This aligns with contemporary workers’ reported fears about AI displacing and devaluing the skills, education, employment certainty and creativity that people bring to the workplace.

Further, workers in most Western societies are experiencing similar challenging circumstances — political ennui, ineffective governance, economic stress, social fracture, uncertainty, military conflict — that caused the Luddites to spawn and act. All the uncertainties are present to indicate to workers that AI is a significant change — and a threat.

What should employers do?

AI will become a more pervasive and powerful force in the workplace over the next two years. Surveys show people will react in different ways. Some will embrace AI, some will be unsure and some fearful and opposed to it. Mitigating the insider threat to an organisation’s AI requires:

• Communication from leaders to employees to cultivate trust in the use of the technology.
• Employees’ views about AI in the workplace to be heard through safe, easy-to-use channels.
• Change-management processes to embed AI and support a smooth and inclusive transition.
• Transparency by leaders about how AI will result in workforce changes and employee separations.
• An insider threat program to identify any  workplace discontent or aberrant behaviour that may stem from AI implementation.
• Training and upskilling opportunities to help employees adapt to the new technology and see AI as an enabler, not a threat.
• Leadership modelling of openness to AI and active engagement with the technology to build workforce trust and acceptance.

This article first appeared under the headline 'Stress factories' in the July 2025 issue of Company Director magazine.