Working With AI Robots Could Worsen Human Work Cultures

Lean and mean machines are influencing how we interact at work

- Sarah Green Carmichael

It's said that as work becomes increasingly automated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), our special human traits-empathy and humour, creativity and kindness-will get more valuable. I wonder. What we've seen so far doesn't leave me optimistic.

Instead of embracing what makes us different from machines, we humans seem to be trying to imitate them. Too many of us skip lunch, eschew breaks and work more feverishly, as if we're just brains attached to inefficient fleshy hardware-bodies that get sick, break down and require regular food and rest. Or we try to do too many things at once-texting while driving, emailing at meetings as if we're a laptop that can run multiple programs. Down time is a flaw in a machine, but a requirement for a human.

Nonetheless, there is pressure to work faster, as if speed and quality rise in lockstep. The arrival of chatbots like GPT-4 capable of churning out credible text in seconds has upped the ante on humans.

It's as if John Henry wasn't just trying to outdo a steam-powered drill, but become one. The result is that people and their workplaces have become less patient, less civil. And less human. Imitating machines is a losing battle.