Assessing the AI effect
Questions and concerns about the potentially damaging effects of AI have hit the headlines around the world recently. Although for many it’s become a vital tool in the workplace, could it also be having an effect on the way we think?
Writing on the Inspired Ergonomics website, the company’s Chief Operating Officer Eilidh Stewart-Barritt, explores the cognitive areas that could be affected by AI, including whether a faster pace of work has a negative impact on our ability to focus.
She suggests signs that managers can look out for that can signal workers have become too reliant on the technology, include staff struggling to explain the reasoning behind work created with AI and AI-generation suggestions being accepted too readily. And she also discusses the ways in which rising use of AI could affect neurodiverse colleagues and considerations for employers.
The article says: “Cognitive skills respond, in a fairly straightforward way, to how often they are used. A skill exercised regularly tends to stay sharp. A skill consistently handed over to another system, whether a calculator, a satnav or now an AI assistant, tends to fade through simple lack of practice. This is not a new phenomenon, and it is not, in itself, a criticism of AI. Very few of us still commit telephone numbers to memory, and few would consider that a meaningful loss.
“The relevant question for the workplace is not whether AI affects cognition, since the evidence … is clear that it does, but rather which cognitive skills are worth deliberately preserving, and which can reasonably be delegated. That is a decision each organisation, and each individual, is entitled to make consciously rather than by default or trend.”
