Chatbots have rapidly burst into our lives and are gaining more and more space in them, especially when it comes to work. Although modern AI systems should make us more efficient, the results of a new study suggest that this is not really the case. As scientists at the Technical University of Berlin have found, working side by side with robots can make people much lazier. Moreover, the constant use of AI bots can lead to unintended negligence and a decrease in the quality of work, which opens up opportunities for potential safety risks.
How to Work with Robots?
Since the release of ChatGPT and other chatbots, millions of people around the world have begun to fear for their jobs, believing that AI could make them unemployed. Now that generative AI systems have started working side by side with us, people have learned to see them as teammates. Daily interaction with generative assistants is essentially teamwork, which has both negative and positive effects on labor productivity. So, when working in a team, we often relax and let our colleagues do some of the work for us. This behavior occurs frequently and is called “social idleness.” That’s why scientists wanted to find out if we’re really slacking off when we work with AI systems and robots. It should be noted that traditionally, robots have had little interaction with human colleagues for security reasons. For example, in the automotive sector, the payload capacity and speed of large one-armed robots pose a serious danger to humans. Nevertheless, there is a growing trend to bring humans and robots closer together, both physically and online.
The Habit of Living “In One Click”
A few years ago, many digital actions required at least minimal effort: buying a SIM card for registration, coming up with a complex password, searching for information yourself, or checking data manually. Today, most of these tasks are solved in seconds. Neural networks write texts, algorithms select content, and services like GetTempNumber allow you to instantly get a temporary registration number with no unnecessary actions or disclosure of personal data. Gradually, people get used to the fact that technology removes almost any inconvenience. This has more than just advantages. The more often digital services do the work for us, the faster there is a desire to shift even the simplest tasks to them. As a result, convenience increasingly becomes dependent on constant automation, and the habit of thinking and checking information on your own gradually weakens. That is why scientists increasingly associate the development of AI not only with increased productivity, but also with the formation of a new form of digital laziness.
Social Inaction
In the study, the scientists modeled the task of checking industrial defects: searching for errors on printed circuit boards. The study involved 42 people who were provided with images of printed circuit boards and tasked with identifying errors. However, half of the participants were told that the boards they were looking at had already been checked by a
robot named Panda. Both groups were then asked to rate their efforts in a post-task survey. Although both groups spent about the same amount of time on the task and rated their efforts and productivity equally, the Panda group made more mistakes and identified fewer defects than the other group. This is despite the fact that both groups stated that they devoted the same amount of time and attention to the task. The authors of the study note that this could be because the participants who worked with Panda were less engaged in cognitive effort, because they knew that they could simply rely on a robot that would catch any mistakes. This is the same effect that can occur when you are assigned to do a group project at work or at school — and one person does all the work, while everyone else goes about their business, because they know that this will be handled.
Laboratory & Reality
Such behavior in the laboratory is unlikely to cause any problems, but in the real world the situation can be much more serious. Working side by side with robots in places such as production halls or even in design and development is fraught with dangerous consequences. With longer shifts, when tasks are routine and the work environment provides little to no performance monitoring and feedback, the loss of motivation is usually much greater. In production in general, but especially in safety-related areas where double-checking is common, this can negatively affect work outcomes. Of course, this work has limitations. First, the sample size is relatively small — only 42 participants. Secondly, the study was conducted in a laboratory environment that is very different from real life. The findings, however, suggest that working together with AI and robots can make us dangerously lazy.
The Engine of Progress
Another interesting experiment was conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this study, the first group of subjects worked with artificial intelligence, and the second without it. The results showed that the indicators of the first group surpassed the second in almost all performance metrics. However, the group working with AI was overly reliant on computer systems. Moreover, a thorough analysis of the data revealed something disturbing — although the subjects were expected to use artificial intelligence to solve their tasks, AI seemed to do the lion’s share of the work – most of the subjects simply redirected questions to the chatbot and received the necessary answers. So why is excessive trust in AI fraught with trouble? The answer is simple — it’s banal laziness, carelessness, and a decrease in critical thinking. As they say, trust but verify. Finally, we note that the results of another study have shown that working with powerful artificial intelligence increases the likelihood that a person will fall asleep at the wheel and make serious mistakes when performing calculations.
Final Word
Ultimately, the problem is not the technology itself, but how we use it. Neural networks, robots, and digital services like GetTempNumber create comfort that seemed impossible
until recently. But along with this comfort, our behavior is gradually changing: we are increasingly choosing not to think when we can automate it, and not to figure it out when we can “hand it off to the system.”
Perhaps the main question today is no longer “will technology make us smarter or lazier,” but “will we be able to maintain the habit of thinking for ourselves in a world where almost everything can be obtained with one click.”
