The workers who frequently interact with artificial intelligence systems (AI) have increased likelihood of experiencing loneliness which can lead to insomniaand even to a greater consumption of alcohol after work, indicates a study by the American Psychological Association (APA) released this Monday.
The researchers conducting the study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, conducted experiments in the United States, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia and had consistent results across different cultures.
They also found that employees who frequently used AI were more likely to help other workers“but that response may derive from their loneliness and need for social contact.”
The studies found that participants with a higher tendency to feel insecure and concerned about their social connections responded more to working with AI with both positive reactions, such as helping colleagues, and negative ones, such as loneliness and insomnia.
One of the experiments, in which 166 engineers from a Taiwanese biomedical company were monitored for three weeks, showed that employees who interacted more with AI were more likely to experience loneliness, insomnia, and increased alcohol consumption outside of work, but also they exhibited helping behaviors to colleagues.
Another experiment with 126 real estate consultants at an Indonesian company produced similar findings, except that there was no association between frequency of AI use and post-work alcohol consumption.
There were similar results from an online experiment with 214 workers in the United States and another with 294 employees in Malaysia.
The coupling of employees and machines “fundamentally alters the work-related interactions to which employees are accustomedwho are increasingly finding themselves interacting with artificial intelligence systems rather than human colleagues,” the study notes.
In the 24-page article, the authors recall that for thousands of years humans have developed internal systems that “prioritized social interaction,” which have remained effective in workplaces.
The advent of digital and non-social AI systems, and their incorporation into the work of workers, threatens to disrupt the operation of these systems of perception of relationships between human beings, they expose.
“Rapid advancement in artificial intelligence systems is ushering in a new industrial revolution that is reshaping work, with many benefits and some as yet unexplored dangers, including potentially damaging mental and physical impacts,” said Pok Man Tang, a professor at the University of Georgia and one of the research authors.
He emphasized that “Humans are social animals, and the isolation associated with working with AI systems can have a detrimental impact on the personal lives of employees.”
Tang said developers of AI technology should consider adding “social traits” such as a human voice to their systems to emulate interactions that normally occur between humans.
Employers could also limit the frequency of working with AI by offering opportunities for their employees to socialize, he added.
According to the TechJury platform, globally 35% of companies already use AI and another 42% explore the use of artificial intelligence in the future.
On May 30, dozens of AI researchers, as well as engineers and executives from digital companies -including OpenAI and Google DeepMind-, warned in a statement released in the media that “mitigating the risk of extinction (for humanity) coming from AI should be a global priority along with other societal risks like pandemics and nuclear war.”
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