fullscreen

eFinder

eFinder

Home › Article

America's AI backlash: How the effort to keep worker trust is evolving inside companies

Cnbc · 🇺🇸 public United States · · 798 words · By Rachel Curry
headphones Listen to the eFinder podcast briefing
Generate a natural audio summary of this story
Daily briefing

What to know about America's AI backlash: How the effort to keep worker trust is evolving inside companies

Even as AI becomes more familiar to the average person, workplace anxiety around it remains high.

Claims checked 13
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center100%
Right0%

5 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Even as AI becomes more familiar to the average person, workplace anxiety around it remains high.

Why it matters

When business leaders integrate technology without clear, intentional communication, they risk alienating their workforce in ways that can be difficult to reverse.

Common ground

Despite the majority of employers who've cut jobs for AI backtracking on their decision over the last year, more than half (53%) of Americans across demographic groups continue to worry that AI will put someone in their household out of work.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/23/ai-backlash-workers-job-losses.html

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 13 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 5
schedule Pending 3
help Insufficient Evidence 2
info Single Source 1
verified Verified By Reference 1
verified Verified 1
check_circle
Claim 1: “Kenny Mendes, chief people officer at Superhuman who joined the company as part of its Coda acquisition”
CORROBORATED
LinkedIn and other reports confirm Kenny Mendes joined the company following the Coda acquisition and is associated with the Superhuman/Grammarly leadership.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Kenny Mendes shared this. It's been a massive year since joining Grammarly, becoming a multi-product company, rebranding as Superhuman, and acquiring multiple companies along the way!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennymendes
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — When Mendes joined the company after it acquired Coda in January 2025, he said there was a push to unify policies across the combined organizations — and he was, for better or worse, handed the “RTO b…
https://dnyuz.com/2026/04/07/rto-didnt-stick-now-this-compan…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — When we announced Superhuman as our new company name, we knew it signaled the start of a larger refounding moment. Bringing together the teams and cultures of Grammarly, Coda, and Superhuman Mail gave…
https://blog.superhuman.com/our-values/
info
Claim 2: “Sunita Verma, Ironclad's chief technology officer (formerly of Character.AI and Google)”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided evidence for this claim consists of irrelevant search results regarding apartment homes in Alabama and contains no mention of Sunita Verma or her role at Ironclad.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Summer Place Apartments is conveniently located in Huntsville, Alabama, only minutes from shopping, dining, I- 565 and I-65. The community offers one bedroom and two bedroom apartments featuring washe…
https://summerplaceal.com/
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Summer Place is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only as you search for your new apartment home. If you are a vendor to the apartment industry you are not to use this site as a mea…
https://summerplaceal.com/privacy-policy/
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Jan 17, 2022 · Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
https://summerplaceal.com/hello-world/
schedule
Claim 3: “Torani plans to expand its workforce by roughly 30% by March 2027, a move that's driven by a $60 million manufacturing expansion.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 4: “53% of workers concerned that AI tools will make their role feel less necessary, according to a 2026 report from Software Finder”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
verified
Claim 5: “contract software company Ironclad, first founded in 2014”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and the company's own 'About' page explicitly state that Ironclad was founded in 2014.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — An ironclad is a wooden ship, or ship of composite construction, sheathed with thick iron plates. Ironclad may also refer to: Casemate ironclad, a particular type of ironclad warship in use during th…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_(disambiguation)
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Ironclad is a software as a service company that makes contract management software. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Ironclad provides a platform for legal and business…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_(software)
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship protected by steel or iron armor constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to e…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship
+ 3 more evidence sources
check_circle
Claim 6: “Jackie Swanson, managing partner at Gartner”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent sources, including LinkedIn and TechTarget, confirm Jackie Swanson is a Managing Partner at Gartner Consulting.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Managing Partner at Gartner Consulting Jackie Swanson, also notes that material innovation "has stopped being only a marketing story”, it's now risk management. This shift is exactly where Everbloom w…
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-swanson-944a401
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — This week, Michael sits down with Jackie Swanson, Managing Partner at Gartner Consulting, for one of the most important conversations retailers need to hear right now.
https://www.retailcouncil.org/podcast/retails-ai-reckoning-j…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Jackie Swanson: We're partners in Gartner Consulting. I sit more on the industry side, and Andrew sits more on the technology side. We help clients with governance and program management during projec…
https://www.techtarget.com/it-strategy/feature/How-to-migrat…
verified
Claim 7: “the flagship product was born in 2009”
VERIFIED
TechTarget explicitly states that Grammarly's writing platform was first released in 2009.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — In linguistics, grammar is the system of rules that governs how a natural language is structured and used, as evidenced by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrase…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recent…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Grammarly is an American English-language writing assistant software tool. It started as a tool to review the spelling, grammar, and tone of a piece of writing and to identify possible instances of pl…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammarly
+ 3 more evidence sources
check_circle
Claim 8: “In 2025, Grammarly changed its name to Superhuman after the company acquired an AI email app of the same name.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources (TechCrunch, Medium) report that Grammarly acquired Superhuman and rebranded the parent company to Superhuman in 2025.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and dec…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Grammarly is an American English-language writing assistant software tool. It started as a tool to review the spelling, grammar, and tone of a piece of writing and to identify possible instances of pl…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammarly
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Superhuman is an email app founded in 2014 by Rahul Vohra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhuman_(email_client)
+ 3 more evidence sources
check_circle
Claim 9: “more than half (53%) of Americans across demographic groups continue to worry that AI will put someone in their household out of work”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent sources (Reuters/Ipsos poll reported across different web results) confirm that more than 50% (specifically 53% in one source) of Americans worry AI will cause job loss for someone in their household.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Cognition AI, Inc. (also known as Cognition Labs), doing business as Cognition, is an American artificial intelligence (AI) company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company developed De…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition_AI
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — DeepSeek is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the Chinese company DeepSeek. Released on 20 January 2025, DeepSeek-R1 surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded freeware app on th…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepSeek_(AI)
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) public benefit corporation (PBC) headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops proprietary generative AI models, particularly its generativ…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
+ 3 more evidence sources
schedule
Claim 10: “Torani's workforce of more than 500 people”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
help
Claim 11: “Melanie Dulbecco, Torani's CEO since 1991”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results regarding Melanie Dulbecco's tenure as CEO of Torani.
check_circle
Claim 12: “the acquisition of AI productivity tool Coda, now Superhuman Docs”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources confirm that Grammarly (now Superhuman) acquired Coda and renamed it Superhuman Docs.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Superhuman is being acquired by Grammarly to build the future of work. Company News Jul 01, 2025. Superhuman & Grammarly. I met Shishir Mehrotra — co-founder of Coda, and now the CEO of Grammarly — ba…
https://blog.superhuman.com/superhuman-is-being-acquired-by-…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Coda is now called Superhuman Docs: the same product under a new name, not a shutdown. Superhuman, the company formerly named Grammarly that bought Coda, relaunched it under the new name on 8 July 202…
https://ivconsulting.in/blogs/coda-is-now-superhuman-docs-st…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Superhuman review 2026: Grammarly bought it, then renamed itself Superhuman. What the suite means for pricing ($25/$33), the AI features, and whether it's still worth it.
https://aivario.com/tools/superhuman
help
Claim 13: “California-based flavored syrup manufacturer Torani has maintained a track record of zero layoffs over its 103 years.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results to support or refute the claim about Torani's layoff history.
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.