From the moment ChatGPT burst onto the scene two years ago, we all knew that artificial intelligence was going to be one of those dramatic, once-in-a-generation technologies that would upend the world of business. We knew it would do that in gigantic ways, forcing companies to totally restructure many of their operations and staffing. But what is usually lost during all this excitement is not the grand, sweeping changes that are taking place, but all the little ways the technology is already gnawing at the fabric of business and the workplace.
Case in point: As we reported in This Week in Leadership, workers are sending three million messages every day to ChatGPT about wages and compensation. Think about it—three million! And just to ChatGPT. What they’re looking for, of course, is information to improve their leverage when they ask for a raise. And you have to admit, managers must find it a little intimidating when an employee is asking about “pay bands” and “compensation tables.” All of a sudden, details workers have never known about are just an AI click away. As Bryan Ackermann, our astute head of AI strategy and transformation at Korn Ferry, says, “It surprises me not one little bit.”
But the drama doesn’t stop there. The problem is that AI can’t possibly know if a given firm is in the middle of shifting its pay pool, or adopting an entirely new pay strategy requiring a whole new set of staffers. Armed with the wrong data, employees who are pounding their chest with their new “knowledge” could potentially back themselves into a corner, and do worse at the negotiating table.
Who would have guessed?
We saw this again when AI-generated “workslop” became part of the modern lexicon almost overnight. We thought the technology would generate our emails in a snap and produce weeks of research in minutes—and it does. Only it also produces a ton of low-grade content that, far from improving worker productivity, is killing it. By one measure, workslop has now crept into about 15 percent of all received work materials, soaking up hours a day for workforces to slog through. Can you imagine how much steam is coming out of your chief financial officer’s ears, realizing that the millions the firm has poured into AI to increase efficiency is doing precisely the opposite?
Yeah, who would have guessed.
Of course, the solution to all this is one word: patience. It’s easy to forget that it took some years before all the glitches on the web were ironed out and companies could consider building websites. It’s also easy to forget how crude those websites once were. The great thing about AI is that the more mistakes it makes, the more it appears to learn from them—and correct them. The great technology learning curve takes some time.
Just know that this transition, too, shall pass. Someday, AI workslop will be just a faded memory.
