The emerging studies are both interesting and a little scary. When we deploy a system or technology, the earliest stages are about building momentum for adoption and deployment. But rolling out AI is not like rolling out Excel or a new ERP. The impact on human cognition is different. So are the emotions: employees are handed a tool that works faster than they ever could, made responsible for validating its output on the backend, all against the ambient noise of AI's labor impacts.
A recent case study by Alami, Paja, and Tiwari, "The Psychological Costs of Artificial Intelligence Adoption in Software Engineering," provides insight into what employees experienced one year post adoption after their organization moved into adoption maturity.
Their results are concerning, and they highlight costs to the workforce that are often overlooked:
- Accountability anxiety
- Craft identity disruption
- Erosion of meaning and satisfaction
- Cognitive and workload intensification
- Uncertainty distress
I've written my thoughts about what tech fluency needs to look like to protect human cognition. But are we prepared for a workforce whose feelings toward their work and their professional identity are being fundamentally changed? And what does that mean for innovation and retention down the line?