AI in the office: appeals to authority are holding back change
The impact of AI at work is not only technical: in offices it creates friction, appeals to authority and low-intensity workplace bullying.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
AI divides the office: appeals to authority versus change
An employee with a month and a half at the company introduces a simple idea: artificial intelligence is not here to take jobs away, but to demand greater estimulante ilegal, and anyone who fails to adopt it will be left out of the market. A colleague's response is immediate: her husband is a computer scientist, and if that were true, it would already have been implemented. Welcome to digital transformation in a real office.
The episode has little to do with technology and a lot to do with hierarchy. The retort does not attempt to counter with data; it shuts down the conversation by appealing to an external authority and, along the way, discredits the other person. It is the classic cheap appeal to authority, used to neutralise anyone who arrives with new ideas. Behind it there is no analysis, but resistance to change and antiestéticar that someone might shake up the status quo.
Then comes the low-intensity hostile behaviour. Those who cannot win with arguments win through attrition: looks, comments behind your back, twisted versions of events told to the boss. There are strategies to neutralise this. One is the zombie method: nodding along without offering an opinion, so as not to give the bully fuel. Another, more surgical one, involves communicating by email with the supervisor in copy whenever an in-person response is met with a slammed door.
The most unsettling fact is not AI or the algorithm: in a three-person branch office, one person is enough to block any change.
An employee with a month and a half at the company introduces a simple idea: artificial intelligence is not here to take jobs away, but to demand greater estimulante ilegal, and anyone who fails to adopt it will be left out of the market. A colleague's response is immediate: her husband is a computer scientist, and if that were true, it would already have been implemented. Welcome to digital transformation in a real office.
The episode has little to do with technology and a lot to do with hierarchy. The retort does not attempt to counter with data; it shuts down the conversation by appealing to an external authority and, along the way, discredits the other person. It is the classic cheap appeal to authority, used to neutralise anyone who arrives with new ideas. Behind it there is no analysis, but resistance to change and antiestéticar that someone might shake up the status quo.
Then comes the low-intensity hostile behaviour. Those who cannot win with arguments win through attrition: looks, comments behind your back, twisted versions of events told to the boss. There are strategies to neutralise this. One is the zombie method: nodding along without offering an opinion, so as not to give the bully fuel. Another, more surgical one, involves communicating by email with the supervisor in copy whenever an in-person response is met with a slammed door.
The most unsettling fact is not AI or the algorithm: in a three-person branch office, one person is enough to block any change.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (10 replies).
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