The Safety of Work Ep. 132: How much should we worry about the invasiveness of team support AI?
The findings reveal that invasiveness drives negative reactions more than the stated purpose of monitoring, with participants showing skepticism about AI's ability to accurately measure teamwork quality. The hosts emphasize that even well-intentioned monitoring systems introduce psychosocial hazards and stress, requiring organizations to carefully balance potential benefits against worker well-being impacts when implementing AI-powered team support systems.
Discussion Points:
- (00:00) AI team monitoring invasiveness, AI workplace surveillance
- (03:16) Research paper introduction and authors from Germany
- (04:48) Previous research on electronic monitoring and employee reactions
- (08:49) Study one methodology with invasiveness levels and video scenarios
- (12:12) Study two simulation with teams designing fitness trackers
- (17:46) Study one findings on invasiveness and fairness perceptions
- (24:07) Study two results and participant skepticism about monitoring accuracy
- (32:48) Practical takeaways on invasiveness levels and stakeholder management
- (40:42) Final recommendations on balancing benefits and invasiveness
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Quotes:
Drew Rae: "The moment you divide it up and you just try to analyze the human behavior or analyze the automation, you lose the understanding of where the safety is coming from and what's necessary for it to be safe."
David Provan: "We actually don't think about that automation in the context of the overall system and all of the interfaces and everything like that. So we, we look at AI as AI and, you know, deploying. Introducing ai, but we don't do any kind of comprehensive analysis of, you know, what's gonna be all of the flow on implications and interfaces and potentially unintended consequences or the system, not necessarily just the technology or automation itself."
Drew Rae: People are going to have reactions. And those reactions are gonna have a big impact on their willingness for you to do this in the first place...You can't just force it onto them… All the things that you're trying to improve might actually get worse because of the monitoring.
David Provan: "But I think this paper makes a really good argument, which is actually our automated system should be far more flexible than that. So I might be able to adjust, you know, it's functioning. If I know, if I, if I know enough about how it's functioning and why it's functioning, and I realize that the automation can't understand context and situation, then I should be able to make adjustments."
Drew Rae: Most people don't mind if their car is giving them feedback on their driving, but most people don't like it if their car is phoning home to your boss, giving information about your driving.
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