New Studies Demonstrate AI’s Value as Teammate

Recent studies examine how companies are realizing the value of AI beyond automation and productivity to enhance teamwork and decision-making. Taken together, studies evaluating AI use show value beyond saving time.

Why it matters: As AI becomes part of critical thinking and problem solving, CHROs will play a key role in rethinking organizational strategy to create optimal teams and management structures that effectively incorporate AI tools.

Research findings:

In HRPA’s Annual CHRO survey, the vast majority of respondents (99%) consider increased productivity and efficiency to be a key goal of AI implementation. A growing number of respondents (34%), however, are focused on the use of AI in making better talent decisions.

An Anthropic study evaluating the use of their AI product, Claude, confirms that real-world use of AI occurs at the task level—augmenting and enhancing the quality of individual jobs—rather than wholesale automation of occupations.

Professor Ethan Mollick of Wharton collaborated with Harvard and others to study the use of AI in product development in cooperation with Procter & Gamble, measuring the impact on solution quality, time spent, and employee response to AI as a teammate.

The study compared individuals working without AI, individuals plus AI, teams working without AI, and teams plus AI.

The findings hint at the direction AI is heading in the workplace:

• Performance: Teams with AI performed the best of all, but only slightly better than individuals with AI.

• Quality: When looking solely at the quality of work, teams using AI ranked in the top 10% of quality, demonstrating the continued value of teamwork and the added value provided by AI.

• Efficiency: Individuals and teams augmented by AI worked 12-16% faster than non-AI workers and provided more detailed solutions.

• Collaboration: AI helped eliminate silos. While R&D professionals tended toward tech solutions and Commercial professionals favored a market approach to product development, AI helped balance the solution. Similarly, it helped bridge the gap between experienced and less experienced employees.

• Job Satisfaction: Those working with AI reported experiences on par with or exceeding the satisfaction of working on a human team.

The bottom line: As the working paper concludes, AI’s augmentation of critical thinking and complex problem-solving requires HR to think about AI as “more like a teammate than a tool,” and will require redesigned team structures, management, and organizational strategies to incorporate AI in this role.