The Cybernetic Teammate

Over the past couple years, we have learned that AI can boost the productivity of individual knowledge workers ranging from consultants to lawyers to coders. But most knowledge work isn’t purely an individual activity; it happens in groups and teams. And teams aren't just collections of individuals – they provide critical benefits that individuals alone typically can't, including better performance, sharing of expertise, and social connections. So, what happens when AI acts as a teammate? This past summer we conducted a pre-registered, randomized controlled trial of 776 professionals at Procter and Gamble, the consumer goods giant, to find out. We are ready to share the results in a new working paper: The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise. Given the scale of this project, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this paper was a massive team effort coordinated by the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard and led by Fabrizio Dell’Acqua ... Read full article.