Even when machine intelligence outperforms human workers, when it replaces a human colleague, group productivity falls, a new study found. In addition, the output of people who are simply observers is negatively affected. Managers need to think carefully about the impact that AI has on team sociability, motivation, and trust.

Columbia Business School’s Bruce Kogut and two colleagues—Harvard Business School’s Fabrizio Dell’Acqua and Yeshiva University’s Patryk Perkowski—studied the impact of artificial intelligence on team functioning. They asked 110 two-person teams to play 12 rounds of Super Mario Party’s Dash and Dine, a video game in which players must collect ingredients for a recipe.
After the first six rounds of play, one member of some teams was replaced by an intelligent agent. Over the next six rounds, those teams gathered, on average, three fewer ingredients than teams that continued as originally configured. The conclusion: When AI teammates come on board, performance drops.

 

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by Juan Martinez