🙇♀️ Humans are said to be prone to slacking off when working with robots. This type of “social loafing” was discovered in a study by the Technical University of Berlin.
🦾 Robots are often seen as reliable team members and people like to leave work to them, which leads to employees becoming careless. This behavior is observed when people are used to the consistently high performance of individuals or feel that their own performance is not sufficiently appreciated.
The research and its findings:
📖 To explore this phenomenon, the scientists gave their subjects a real-life inspection task – examining circuit boards.
👥 The participants were divided into two groups: One group received information that a robot had already helped with the inspection, while the other group worked without this expectation.
❌ Although the self-ratings were similar in terms of effort and engagement, the researchers found that those who thought the robot had helped identified fewer errors and missed more.
Safety-related concerns:
📉 This careless behavior can be problematic, especially in safety-critical areas. In environments with little performance monitoring and feedback, motivation could wane and affect performance, negatively impacting outcomes, especially in areas where duplicate controls are common.
Our statement on this:
🤖 In the business world, robots can already perform many simple and time-consuming tasks. Nevertheless, strategic and business-relevant tasks are still reserved for human employees.
🤝 Collaboration between humans and machines requires a better understanding of each team member’s responsibilities and roles to be effective.
What’s your take on AI and robotics support in the workplace? Feel free to share your experiences!
