3 challenges that AI integration presents in the workplace

"MARTIN GONZALEZ: I'm Martin Gonzalez. I'm a Principal of Organization and Leadership Development at Google, and I'm the author of The Bonfire Moment. The book explores this idea that teams are harder than tech. In the process of innovation, it's so important for leaders and CEOs and founders to pay attention to the people side of the business because that could easily derail your best-laid-out plans."

"We also know that we flip-flop between these really intense narratives of substitution. "Our jobs are going to go away. My role will get replaced. There will be less of people playing my kind of work, my kind of role because of AI." And a narrative of augmentation, which is, "These tools give me superpowers that allow me to do more within my role.And I will succeed and do well in the future if I can only adapt these new technologies.""

Teams and the people side of organizations often pose greater challenges than the technology of innovation. Employees oscillate between narratives of substitution (job loss) and augmentation (enhanced capability) when adopting AI. Early research indicates that workplace AI adoption has not yet delivered the transformative potential promised by inventors. A Selective Upgrade Puzzle can emerge when AI provides superpowers to only a subset of users, producing uneven performance and capability across an organization. A randomized controlled experiment with junior consultants gave some groups access to a large language model and assigned consulting tasks to evaluate effects.

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