The relationship between AI and humans

If you ask something of ChatGPT, an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool that is all the rage, the responses you get back are almost instantaneous, utterly certain and often wrong. It is a bit like talking to an economist. The questions raised by technologies like ChatGPT yield much more tentative answers. But they are ones that managers ought to start asking.

One issue is how to deal with employees’ concerns about job security. Worries are natural. An AI that makes it easier to process your expenses is one thing; an AI that people would prefer to sit next to at a dinner party quite another. Being clear about how workers would redirect time and energy that is freed up by an AI helps foster acceptance. So does creating a sense of agency: research conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group found that an ability to override an AI makes employees more likely to use it.