by Tom Snee

A new study from the Tippie College of Business finds that artificial intelligence can be an effective learning tool for workers and contribute to their knowledge gain. It can also too easily become a “firehose” of information that overwhelms them, dragging down their performance, and hurting their well-being. 

Researcher Yiduo Shao says that the amount of information the AI algorithm provides is often considerably more than a worker can effectively process, so finding the information they need is stressful and lowers their performance.

Bank customer service workers use AI

Shao, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, gathered data through surveys and diaries from more than 100 customer service representatives at a call center for a South Korean bank. They field questions from customers that could be as simple as how to set up a savings account to more complex questions about things like estates.

The agents have an AI robot available to help find information about questions they can’t answer themselves, which was used on about 15% of the calls per day on average across all employees. Shao said the robot did help the agents learn much more about their jobs, deepening their knowledge of the bank’s products and services. 

However, it provided so much irrelevant information employees felt overwhelmed searching through the response to find what they needed to answer the customer’s question. 

“The sheer amount of information and the complexity of that information made it more difficult to find an answer than if they had asked another human who could provide only the information they need,” she said. 

Using too much AI leads to performance downgrades

The effects meant the agents’ performance suffered and many received downgraded ratings from their supervisors. The agents themselves also reported it was harder to decompress and mentally “leave work at work” at the end of the day the more they used AI.

However, the study also found that agents who reported to work in a good mood or who were more open to learning and new experiences were better able to avoid the stress caused by the “firehose” of information. She said that employers who use AI could mitigate some of the stress by creating a more pleasant work environment, with more perks and well-being activities.

She said the study also suggests AI needs to be refined so workers are given only the information relevant to them. 

“Sometimes an agent needed just one short response, but you can’t tell the AI to do that,” she said. 

Shao’s study, “Using Augmentation-based AI Tool at Work,” was published in the Journal of Management. 

Media contact: Tom Snee, 319-384-0010 (w); 319-541-8434 (c); tom-snee@uiowa.edu