If there is one defining trend across the corporate world over the past few years, it has been the race to adopt AI. Across almost every sector, executives have scrambled to adopt agentic technologies into their teams’ workflows, tempted by promises of increased productivity, lower headcounts, and a better share price.
Yet as these technologies enter the average employee’s toolkit, they could have long-term ramifications for their users. Recent research has found that a reliance on AI tools could, in fact, be diminishing the critical-thinking skills many employees were hired for and harming their ability to spot misinformation.
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What Impact Does AI Use Have on Employees?
We can’t yet fully understand what long-term effects AI usage will have on the user (rather like Ozempic). Generative AI only entered the mainstream in late 2022 with the public release of ChatGPT, followed by Claude. In those three and a half years, mass adoption of AI soared, with 50% of employees now using AI tools at work in some capacity.
These technologies have undoubtedly offered significant productivity boosts for many employees. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that generative AI users saved an average of 5.4% in weekly work hours. Research by the Harvard Business School also found that AI users completed tasks 25.1% faster and produced output 40%+ higher in quality than those who didn’t use AI.
The productivity gains for CX teams have been particularly impressive. Customer support agents using an AI tool can handle 13.8% more inquiries per hour than agents without AI assistance, while reducing CX operational costs by 30%.
However, the long-term effects on individual employee performance are increasingly in question. Perhaps the more thinking AI undertakes, the less capable employees are of thinking for themselves…
How Does AI Impact Critical Thinking?
A troubling picture is emerging as researchers investigate the cognitive impact of generative AI. Recent research conducted by the MIT Media Lab found that heavy reliance on AI affected people’s ability to identify misinformation and discern fake headlines and images from real ones. Given the business risks posed by AI hallucinations, this is a worrying prospect, particularly for CX teams who regularly handle large volumes of data on a daily basis.
Anku Rami, PhD Student, MIT Media Lab:
“Users get excited about these ‘magical’ LLMs but forget that they’re just statistical models that predict the next ‘token’ in a sequence. […] It comes with real limitations, both in what the model can reliably generate and in its broader impact on the people using it.”
A concerning number of employees are now also reporting mental burnout due to AI use. Harvard University surveyed over 1,400 American workers at large companies to find out how AI affects their cognition. 14% reported feeling a “mental fog” after intensive conversations with AI systems. They described symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, slower decision-making, and even headaches.
Researchers at The Open University Business School recently coined a term for the phenomenon – ‘AI Overdrive Syndrome’, defined as “the state of mental, physical, or emotional exhaustion arising from the excessive use or relentless pursuit of productivity facilitated by artificial intelligence tools.”
AI doesn’t inherently make people less intelligent, but heavy reliance on it can cause cognitive decline. When you consistently outsource memory and problem-solving, your brain can adapt by shifting resources, a process known as cognitive offloading. Indeed, an MIT Media Lab study scanned users’ brains and found that those using AI exhibited significantly reduced brain activity in areas associated with information processing and creativity.
As more and more of our thinking is offloaded onto generative AI tools, it is perhaps unsurprising that employees are left unprepared to do the work themselves.
How to Manage AI Burnout
With mass AI adoption still in its infancy and businesses grappling with where generative technologies fit within their operations, AI burnout is likely to become a serious issue for executives in the coming years. With one in five workers reporting that AI has made their job worse, it may become a retention concern, particularly for industries like CX, where employee churn is already high.
The simplest way to mitigate AI burnout, without abandoning the technologies altogether, may be to let employees identify relevant use cases for themselves, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research. Training on how to employ AI technologies effectively may also be a solution. Rather than simply mandating AI use, managers should train employees to challenge AI outputs, identify bias, and manage uncertainty. Keeping human-centred strategic thinking, creativity, and empathy at the heart of your operations will likely mitigate AI burnout and keep employees both engaged and feeling valued.
AI is a great tool, with significant productivity benefits. The issues emerge when it starts doing the work that humans do best, replacing creativity and strategic thinking.
As economist Theodore Levitt observed, “Anything in excess is a poison”.
