What do Construction Workers Know about Artificial Intelligence? An Exploratory Case Study in an Austrian SME

Artificial intelligence (AI) is by now used in many different work settings, including construction industry. As new technologies change business and work processes, one important aspect is to understand how potentially affected workers perceive and understand the existing and upcoming AI in their work environment. In this work, we present the results of an exploratory case study with 20 construction workers in a small Austrian company about their knowledge of and attitudes toward AI. Our results show that construction workers’ understanding of AI as a concept is rather superficial, diffuse, and vague, often linked to physical and tangible entities such as robots, and often based on inappropriate sources of information which can lead to misconceptions about AI and AI anxiety. Learning opportunities for promoting (future) construction workers’ AI literacy should be accessible and understandable for learners at various educational levels and encompass aspects such as i) conveying the basics of digitalization, automation, and AI to enable a clear distinction of these concepts, ii) building on the learners’ actual experience realm, i.e., taking into account their focus on physical, tangible, and visible entities, and iii) reducing AI anxiety by elaborating on the limits of AI.