Hi and welcome to look at AI. In this edition: The new study suggests that AI can be a team player … Openii promotes its COO while CEO Sam Altman is changing focus … Apple shakes his AI team in frustration due to the delayed apple intelligence features… The revolutionary new method of forecasts.
Evidence of AI’s positive impact on productivity continues to increase. But while many executives see AI as a replacement for human labor, hoping that they will eventually automate tasks and save on the head, the data suggests that this is not the best way to think about technology. Yes, in several cases, AI can completely automate some tasks. But in most cases, today’s Ai-Inverse and so-called AI Agents from the likes of the likes of Salesforce, Servicenow, MicrosoftAnd Google – still not capable or reliable enough to do so. Instead, the systems of you need to be considered as an adjunct to human labor – a way to raise people’s performance, not to be replaced.
The latest support for this view comes from Fascinating study From a group of researchers – from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Barton School of Business, ESEK Business School in France and Consumer Product and Gamble Product Giant – and published as a work paper at the SSRN Research Warehouse. (The authors include Barton, Ethan Molik, who has attracted huge social media by following their advice on how to use AI effectively in business.)
In 2024, the researchers conducted a one -day workshop on the development of virtual products in P&G, with the process designed to mirror the one that consumer products Known used– Visit this time with AI twist. In particular, this workshop included the “seed” phase of product development – which is for a storm of many possible ideas for new products and incubates them to the point that the decision can be decided on whether to test them on a larger scale. P&G usually assigns teams with two people consisting of one person for commercial operations and one research and development expert to work together on storm ideas. In this case, the researchers took 776 P&G employees from commercial and R&D and accidentally assigned them to do one of the following: work alone; work alone, but with access to a generative AI assistant based on the Openai GPT-4 model; work in the usual two -person storm team, consisting of one commercial and one person for research and development; Or work in the usual configuration of two people, but with access to the AI assistant.
Then, the groups were tasked with coming to new ideas for consumer products in various P&G divisions (baby care, women’s care, grooming and oral care). These ideas were then evaluated by human judges and with relevant business and technology expertise.
AI raises individual performance – after many
Two heads are generally better than one, so it may not be surprising that individuals who work alone and without access to AI have made the worst. But it turned out that the individuals with the help of AI performed, on average, better than teams with two people without AI. In fact, the performance of these people with the help of AIs were not statistically better than teams with two people working with AI. This can lead to the conclusion that AI can really be a good replacement for human labor-with a company such as Procter & Gamble to reduce its two-person product teams with only single individuals with the help of AI.
There were some other great benefits for individuals working with AI, too. Individuals who worked with AI were able to work faster – taking more than 16% less time to come up with an idea compared to people who work without AI, while the teams working with AI were about 12% faster.
Working with AI was also better than “bowling alone” – individuals reported more positive emotions and less negative during the product ideas process than undiscovered lonely wolves.
More importantly, people who work on their own tend to deliver ideas that first fit into their professional silos – commercial people who favor the innovation of products, which mainly concerned new commercial ideas (changes in branding, packaging or marketing strategy) while research specialists. But when they helped them from AI, these people achieved mixed approaches, combining technical innovation and commercial innovation-as well as human human couples. “This suggests that AI serves not only as an information provider, but as an effective mechanism for border deployment, helping professionals look across the traditional domain boundaries and to approach the problems more holistic,” the researchers wrote.
Helping teams to be outstanding
But before jumping to the conclusion that AI should be used to reduce the size of the team, it is important to emphasize perhaps the most interesting finding of the whole study: the two teams working with AI have created many more ideas that human experts have described as “exceptional” – 10% of which they think will probably lead to real products. Human teams with the help of AI have also reported the greatest enjoyment of the task of the task, compared to other groups.
Blogging for the findingsMollik wrote that “organizations are primarily regarding AI as just another tool for productivity, as a better calculator or table”, but that employees often use “AI for critical thinking and complex problem solving, not just for routine productivity tasks”. AI can be considered as another team member – as an associate – not just another tool, he wrote. “Companies that focus exclusively on the benefits of AI efficiency will not only find workers who do not want to share their discoveries for fear that they will be superfluous, but also miss the opportunity to think bigger for the future of work,” he wrote. He encouraged organizations to reconsider work and management structures, not only to try to automate existing processes.
I’m sure this is true. Unfortunately, the temptation for many managers will be to grab the obvious offer to save labor and saving time, as there is an obvious and immediate payment in labor saving. Wille need bolder directors to argue about keeping people in operation, but using AI to strengthen them to be exceptional.
With that, here’s the rest of this week news about AI.
Ereeremi Khan
ereerems.kahn@fortune.com
@jeremyakahn
Before we come to the news, if you are interested in finding out more about how AI will affect your business, economics and our societies (and since you are reading this newsletter, you are probably), please consider joining me at the Fortune Brainstorm AI London 2025. Confirmed speakers include CEO CEO, Aidan Gomez, MasterCard Product CEO, Ornorn Lambert, eBay AI chief officer, Nitzan McKel, partner in each, John Maguier, said technology analyst Benedict Evans and many others. Be I be there, of course. I hope to see you there too. You can apply to attend Here.
And, if you miss you in London, why not consider joining me in Singapore on July 22 and 23 for Fortune Brainstorm Ai Singapore. You can find out more about that event Here.
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
Source link
