GenAI in the workplace: friend or foe?

Several years ago, a study from TU Darmstadt explored how we feel about having robots as colleagues. The responses were mostly positive, with many regarding their robot peers as beneficial to their work.

For instance, over 60% of respondents could easily imagine being supported by a robotic colleague, with 21% even suggesting such a change would be an improvement, largely due to the belief that a robot would be less error-prone and more predictable in their behavior.

Is the situation different with the rise of generative AI? That was the question posed by a recent study from Royal Holloway University of London, which looked at how computer science professionals feel about the introduction of generative AI into their workplace.

AI support

Various analyses have suggested that programmers are in the firing line when it comes to being replaced by AI, but McKinsey research found that software developers were actually much more productive when they used GenAI. So, far from being replaced by the technology, the technology “should” make them more effective.

But how do programmers themselves feel? Interestingly, the research found a combination of excitement and trepidation. The researchers examined the impact of Github’s Copilot, a generative AI tool developed specifically for programmers.

They harvested over 100,000 tweets from X that mentioned the technology between July 2021 and June 2022. They were able to identify the specific emotions that were expressed in each tweet to gauge how feelings changed over time.

The results highlight the mixed views many developers have about AI. In the early days, there was pronounced excitement about the possibilities the tool offered. For instance, many developers explained how the tool was automating many of the tedious jobs they find boring, such as fixing minor bugs or writing repetitive code blocks.

This freed up their time to work on more enjoyable and challenging programming tasks, which, in turn, gave them a greater sense of achievement and fulfillment in their job.

Man and machine

The optimistic aspiration for some time regarding technology is that it would provide a Keynesian lift from the mundane in life and afford us more time to do what we really enjoy. It’s perhaps not entirely how things are unfolding, however.

As a pithy meme explains, AI promised to do things like the laundry and the dishes to free us to paint and write, and instead, it’s writing and painting for us and freeing us to do the laundry and dishes.

It’s far from a unique narrative. In I, Human, UCL’s Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic ponders whether AI as it currently is enslaves us more than liberates us.

He argues that in many instances, it’s not the mundane things that are being automated but our very thought processes themselves. We’re not being freed up to think more as technology is doing that for us.

“There is not much evidence that the rise of AI has been leveraged in some way to elevate our curiosity or intellectual development, or that we are becoming any wiser,” he explains.

“Our lives seem not just predicted, but also dictated by AI.”

It makes perfect sense from a technological perspective for so much of our lives to be automated, but it makes far less sense from our own. Much of our lives seem to be optimized for and by technology, and Chamorro-Premuzic suggests that we have far from becoming freed by automation and instead surrendered our humanity to it.

Humane work

The Royal Holloway researchers urge any employer or manager thinking of introducing AI into their organization to think about how doing so might impact workers. The aim of technology should always be to liberate and enhance workers rather than reduce them to babysitters whose only role is to step in when the machines make a mistake.

The study shows that tools, such as Copilot, can be powerful allies in the workplace, but this cannot be taken for granted. It’s important that we continue to view AI as an adjunct to humans rather than a replacement for them.

This is especially so as AI is being introduced into a wide range of other domains, so what is happening in pioneering professions, such as software development, is likely to extend into others in time.

While we’re not in the midst of a Terminator-style battle for humanity, we should nonetheless strive to ensure that as AI develops, it truly lives up to its promise of liberating us from drudgery and freeing us to do the things that make us human.