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Since the release and viral success of ChatGPT in late 2022, generative AI has been integrated into an ever-expanding number of tech platforms and gadgets. As is often the case with powerful new technologies, generative AI’s growth has outpaced our ability to build frameworks for safe and responsible use.
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Teachers, for example, must now contend with the fact that many (if not all) of their students are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to complete assignments. The long-term implications of this sudden surge for the education system remain to be seen.
Similarly, business leaders now face the challenge of managing a generative AI-powered workforce and ensuring that the technology facilitates, rather than hinders, employee performance. Tech leaders tend to claim that generative AI will enhance human creativity and well-being, but the reality is much less clear.
Research published Tuesday by Harvard Business Review found that generative AI in the workplace is a double-edged sword: It can improve employee output but also erode one’s sense of meaning and engagement at work.
The AI hangover
The research — which comprises four separate studies — followed 3,500 human subjects as they completed a range of work tasks, from brainstorming project ideas to drafting emails. Some of these tasks were completed with the help of generative AI, and others weren’t.
The researchers found that the final results from the AI-assisted workers were generally of a higher quality: Emails drafted with the help of AI, for example, were judged to be more encouraging and friendly.
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However, the subjects who initially used AI suffered psychologically when they were forced to switch to a different task that they had to complete on their own. In these workers, and across all four studies, intrinsic motivation dropped by an average of 11%, and boredom shot up by an average of 20% after losing the helping hand of AI. The workers who consistently worked without AI, on the other hand, didn’t report any significant emotional shifts.
The upshot is that the benefits of using generative AI in the workplace often produce a kind of hangover, which can harm employee well-being.
“While using gen AI tools can feel productive and empowering at first, it may leave workers feeling less engaged when they shift to tasks that don’t involve AI support — a common reality in workflows where not every task can or should be AI-assisted,” said the report.
According to the research, the psychological toll reported by workers who initially used AI is rooted in a sense of agency and control — or the lack thereof. The work offloaded to AI in each task tended to be the most cognitively demanding aspects of those tasks, which are also normally the most rewarding. When critical thinking becomes automated, the quality of the outputs might noticeably improve, but the sudden return to critical thinking produces a kind of emotional whiplash that leaves workers feeling sapped of motivation.
“Essentially, workers regain their autonomy but feel less inspired and challenged,” the report noted.
Tips for employers
The new research can help business leaders sketch out a policy roadmap for employees’ use of AI.
Rather than recommending a ban on generative AI in the workplace, the Harvard researchers recommend that employers seek to maximize this technology’s benefits while mitigating its costs. This can be done, for example, by using AI in the early stages of a project — for example, drafting an outline of a performance review — before transitioning to AI-free human creativity. Additionally, employees who have just completed an AI-assisted task should switch immediately to an unautomated task that requires critical thinking to maintain a sense of agency and engagement.
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According to the researchers, education should also be prioritized. Rather than blindly hoping that individuals and teams can integrate generative AI into their workflows in a way that benefits the whole, employers should launch training initiatives, workshops, and communication efforts that clarify the ways in which this technology can help and the ways it can harm.
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