---
id: "prereq-agentic-vs-generative-ai-d9"
type: "prereq"
source_timestamps: ["¶1"]
tags: ["ai-literacy", "definitions"]
related: ["concept-agentic-ai-skepticism", "claim-trust-drop-agentic"]
reason: "Required to understand why employee trust is collapsing at different rates depending on the type of AI deployed."
sources: ["adoption"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-adoption"
originDay: 9
articleStem: "hbr-edu-40-workers-dont-trust-ai"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/11/workers-dont-trust-ai-heres-how-companies-can-change-that"
sourceTitle: "Workers Don’t Trust AI. Here’s How Companies Can Change That."
---
# Generative vs. Agentic AI Distinction

**Prerequisite:** the reader must understand the difference between:
- **Generative AI** — tools that *lighten workloads and boost creativity* by making recommendations or generating content (the human stays in the decision seat); and
- **Agentic AI** — systems that can *act independently and make decisions* (the system takes the action).

**Why it's required:** this distinction is load-bearing for the whole source, because the trust drop for **agentic AI (89%)** is vastly more severe than for **generative AI (31%)** in the May–July 2025 window (see [[claim-trust-drop-agentic]]). Without the distinction, the reader cannot grasp *why* trust is collapsing at different rates for different AI types — the phenomenon analyzed in [[concept-agentic-ai-skepticism]]. The gap is explained by autonomy: resistance spikes when a system replaces human *judgment*, not when it merely supports it.