Is artificial intelligence leading employees to alcoholism and insomnia?

Stained job! It’s a section where Oliver Schmocker answers your toughest questions [et les plus pertinentes] In the modern business world…and of course its quirks. A reading date Tuesday and the Thursday. Would you like to participate? Send us your question at [email protected]

Q – “I read here and there that, tomorrow morning, we will have to work with artificial intelligence and that this should enhance our productivity. I find it hard to believe: to be truly productive in pairs or as a team, you have to work ‘face to face’ (trust each other , support each other, understand each other without talking to each other, etc.) And I don’t see how that could be possible with a robot…” “Richard”

A – Dear Richard, you have put your finger on a sore point regarding the gradual implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in our workplaces: Is there, in essence, a real integration possible between human and AI? I mean, a useful integral for the same factor.

If you believe the results of a recent study on the subject, there is indeed reason to doubt it. Let’s look at this together.

Bok Man Tang is Professor of Management at the University of Georgia’s Terry School of Business, Athens (USA). Together with seven other researchers, he interviewed and analyzed the lives of 794 people who work daily with artificial intelligence in the United States, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia. And that for a year.

This allowed him to make two discoveries:

– Those who are paired with AI are more likely to be alcoholics than others.

They are also more likely to suffer from insomnia.

It is because these workers generally get sucked into a vicious circle. Once paired with an AI, they have less contact with their fellow humans. However, since each of us is above all a “social animal,” as Aristotle puts it, these workers begin to suffer from this “lack” of human contact. Their reaction is to look for it outside of work, just to make up. But now, it is not always easy to make friends, so they start to suffer from loneliness. At work and out of work. This translates, unfortunately, into insomnia and alcoholism.

It should be noted that this phenomenon is especially expressed with people who have a more pronounced need for attachment and recognition than the average person.

In short, the deployment of AI in our workplaces “heralds an evolution toward a ‘social order’, where people can feel socially disconnected at work as well as outside of it,” the study states. In other words, it is time to collectively ask ourselves whether or not we really want to move towards “antisocial” systems, not to say “inhuman.” Whether or not AI is coupled with human operators is good management practice. Thus, whether loneliness is the desired and desired future for humans or not.

Richard, your question is, in my view, a form of response to these existential questions. Because it shows your gut instincts to rein in the growing spread of AI in our workplaces. A hunch clearly validated by the work of management researchers…

By the way, the French rapper MC Solaar said in “La Concubine de l’hémoglobine”: “Because science throws its science at us, science without conscience is equal to science of the unconscious.”