How using AI in the workplace could negatively impact your career, according to experts

Sandra Matz, a professor at Columbia Business School, says using artificial intelligence can make people “bored.” Her research on this topic shows two immediate consequences for workers: stagnation and mediocrity.

“When employees use this to outsource critical thinking and creative reasoning, there is a real risk that they will gradually fall behind and become complacent,” Matsu says.

One reason for this, she said, is that many AI tools produce the most obvious and safest responses, adding: “In short, we become just like everyone else.”

According to a survey released in March by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 43% of U.S. workers report already using AI in their jobs.

But Fred Oswald, an industrial-organizational psychologist and former member of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board, said many experts may have a hard time distinguishing between helpful and harmful uses of technology.

“There is a frontier in the use of AI that is worth understanding and exploring to help employees and organizations manage risk and reap additional benefits,” Oswald said.

The use of AI has a “wonderful” effect on increasing productivity by automating and speeding up mundane tasks, Matz said. The technology can also be used as a “sparring partner for brainstorming,” she said.

But you don’t want AI to replace your own thinking, problem-solving and creativity, she added.

“The moment all employees start consulting AI when developing ideas, independent thinking begins to be replaced by algorithmic consensus,” Matz says.

Americus Reed II, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business, said his colleagues describe outsourcing critical thinking to AI as “cognitive surrender.”

Rather, Reid said AI is best used to summarize information, analyze data and organize ideas.

“It shouldn’t replace judgment, it should remove friction,” he said. “The goal is to spend less time processing information and more time creating meaning.”

Dorothy Leidner, a professor of business and ethics at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Business, said people early in their careers need to be especially mindful that AI doesn’t get in the way of their learning.

“The risk is higher for younger workers who don’t have the deep expertise to leverage AI as a thought-enhancing tool rather than a thought-generating tool,” Reidner said.

Using AI to draft emails or Slack messages sent to colleagues, employees or managers “will gradually erode trust,” Matz said.

AI can summarize meetings and compile progress reports, but informal interactions in the workplace should be organic and spontaneous, she says.

“The moment they suspect that a message has been outsourced to an AI, they may begin to question whether their colleague cares enough about them to write a message,” she says.

It’s imperfections, lack of sophistication, and even tension in communication that create the strongest connections, she says.

“Preserving human signals in our interactions will be a huge challenge for organizations deploying AI,” Matz says.

Leidner also said he recommends people avoid relying too much on “digital twins,” or virtual clones of themselves, when talking to people they know.

“Once you get to the point where AI is generating emails and AI is responding to emails, no real communication is taking place,” Reidner said.

Eva Serenko, a professor of occupational psychology at Loughborough University in the UK, said she was most concerned about people using AI for tasks that are “core to their understanding of themselves as professionals”.

“Witnessing a tool outperform you on a core task of expertise can be a threat to your standing,” Serenko said. “When these opportunities are taken away, your self-concept becomes even more unstable.”

But as technology advances, experiences like this one may be inevitable, Reed said.

“When an AI performs a task that you’ve long considered ‘me’, it’s natural to ask yourself, ‘What value do I still bring?'” Reid says.

The answer, Reid said, is not to stop using tools, but to find meaning “around the qualities that AI cannot reproduce.”

“Employees need to remember that deploying AI and outsourcing identity are not the same thing,” he said. “While technology changes rapidly, uniquely human skills such as judgment, creativity, curiosity, and interpersonal skills will become even more valuable.”