Signal Top AI barriers: concerns about AI (46%), regulatory and ethical (44%), organizational (39%)

Summary

McKinsey's 2026 survey identifies three leading obstacles to adopting AI at scale. The most cited is unease about AI itself, covering bias, intellectual property, and the risk to jobs, named by 46 percent of respondents. Regulatory, ethical, or legal concerns follow at 44 percent, and they weigh more heavily in Europe, at 48 percent overall and 56 percent in Germany, than in North America at 44 percent or Asia-Pacific at 41 percent. Organizational problems such as change management and entrenched silos rank third at 39 percent. The pattern shows that internal resistance and trust, rather than technology gaps alone, slow adoption.