Got “technostress”? How to process AI before it processes you
https://ift.tt/U5fuZ8y
As companies around the world are being pushed to quickly implement AI solutions that bring convenience and speed to stay relevant, they often overlook the most important element of successful AI implementation — their employees.
Emerging research shows that AI completely changes how we work, come up with ideas and interact with each other. And if the technology is implemented poorly, it carries potential problems — including to our mental health, decision-making abilities and sense of agency that is crucial for our overall well-being.
If we want to stay relevant in the future of work, we need to reframe the question of ‘what can AI do’ and make sure that we’re mastering the skills that the technology can’t. We need to process AI before it processes us.
Finding our connections
Nowadays, around 50% of employees already interact with AI daily. As some tasks are more efficiently handled by AI than humans, this completely alters the dynamics within organizations. When employees are less likely to reach out to colleagues for small questions, this cuts the “weak ties” that are essential for human wellbeing, but also for the sense of affiliation and belonging to an organization.
Research shows that increased AI interaction makes people want to belong to a group and establish social contacts with others more, but also increases loneliness. This depends on the personal attachment style and the strategies that employees are using. Employees with adaptive coping behavior reach out more to human colleagues and build relationships with them as they start using AI. However, employees with maladaptive strategies (for example, experiencing attachment anxiety), end up feeling socially deprived and lonely as a result of increased AI usage, which potentially can affect their mental health.
When an organization implements AI, it is highly recommended that it encourages socialization among employees and offers alternative ways to do it. It is also important to consider individual attachment styles of employees when implementing AI and making sure those at risk (for example, experiencing attachment-related trauma) have access to psychological support.
Seeing the bigger picture
Creativity is often named as one of the key human qualities that should help people stay relevant and keep their jobs in the age of AI. In order to be creative, neuroscience says that a person needs an empty brain and time for it to wander. Most of us, however, don’t have the time and space to be creative, as we are constantly overloading our brains with different digital noise — notifications, emails, news, calls, etc. When our brains are overwhelmed and we are short of time, instead of using all brain networks for creativity, we tend to outsource to AI at least part of the creative process, for example, the idea generation stage. So the job that was supposed to stay with humans is incre...
