AI is a junior colleague

Here is an interesting perspective to apply to your employees’ acceptance of AI in their work – consider AI is a junior work colleague that every employee has at their disposal. With the roll-out of new AI capabilities and agents, there is often push-back from employees who fear that their job is at risk, or they don’t trust AI. Taking a psychological approach that AI is not a tool, but instead is a junior colleague, may assist the adoption and understanding of the new era.

AI is not just a tool

We are in an AI world. It is not just another tool at our disposal – AI is not like a new piece of software on our laptop or a new device. Instead, AI is everywhere, and we need to get our heads around the new paradigm to ensure we are not left in the wake. Admittedly, what most people think when they use AI, is that they are going to a website for ChatGPT or opening a new app for Copilot or Claude. However, the range and reach of AI is so much further, we need to consider AI as a colleague instead of a tool.

Resistance to AI

Employees may be hesitant to the word-changing capabilities of AI being let in to the realm of their job. People fear that AI will replace them, or that it will remove so much of their normal job that they will no longer be useful to the company. There is also resistance from the knowledge that AI hallucinates and makes errors or even makes up information. Staff are logically concerned that not only will their jobs be changed, but it could be something that is worse than the work they do, just because it is cheaper.

What is AI good at, and what is AI bad at?

AI is great at repetitive and standard tasks. It can understand small variations in instructions, and adjust to produce consistent output. It can be incredibly useful at removing “boring” tasks from people – but the best people to set it up to do that, are the people who normally do those tasks. However, AI can be really bad at creativity and problem solving, because it is limited on the information it has access to – it can’t make innovations based on people’s personalities or understand the physical world’s impact on a project or initiative. That is where people excel.

AI as a junior colleague

So, to take a different viewpoint, if we tell employees that they need to treat AI as another person – a junior colleague, but someone who needs to be monitored and guided, their work checked, a colleague who is a person who is happy to do the menial and boring/repetitive tasks. The AI systems will need to be guided by the employee, trained and mentored, and no new work released until a human has reviewed and assessed the output. The trust in the AI needs to be won by the AI, through monitoring, guidance and oversight – like taking a green new graduate under your wing.