People who work closely alongside artificial intelligence are more likely to experience loneliness, binge drinking and insomnia than colleagues who work alongside humans, according to a new study.
The release of ChatGPT last year opened the floodgates to artificial intelligence, as people across the globe rushed to use the chatbot, which can mimic human conversations, while some industries readied to incorporate the technology into day-to-day tasks.
A Goldman Sachs study in March found generative AI could replace and affect 300 million jobs around the world. Another study from Challenger, Gray & Christmas found AI chatbot ChatGPT could replace at least 4.8 million American jobs.
University of Georgia assistant professor of management Pok Man Tang launched a study to investigate artificial intelligence’s effect on human employees after he worked at an investment bank that uses AI. The study found that employees who work closely alongside AI are lonelier than colleagues who don’t use AI and are more prone to binge drinking and insomnia.
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"The rapid advancement in AI systems is sparking a new industrial revolution that is reshaping the workplace with many benefits but also some uncharted dangers, including potentially damaging mental and physical impacts for employees," Tang said of the research, published by the American Psychological Association.
"Humans are social animals, and isolating work with AI systems may have damaging spillover effects into employees’ personal lives," he added.
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The researchers carried out four different experiments in the U.S., Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia, which all found that employees who frequently work with AI were more likely to binge drink after work, have sleepless nights and experience heightened loneliness.
In Taiwan, for example, the research team surveyed 166 engineers at a biomedical company who work with AI over the course of three weeks, asking the engineers about loneliness, attachment anxiety and sense of belonging. The research team also surveyed family members of the participants about their loved ones’ sleep schedule and drinking habits. Overall, the participants were found to increase their after-work drinking habits and reported feeling lonely.
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The researchers also found that, across the four experiments, participants were more likely to help out their human colleagues, which researchers said could be due to the participants feeling lonely and wanting social interaction.
Another experiment on 126 real estate consultants in Indonesia found similar results, though the increased use of AI did not lead to more after-work drinking. Researchers also conducted an online study on 214 full-time working adults in the U.S. and another on 294 employees at a Malaysian tech company, determining there is an association between increased AI use and loneliness.
But the researchers said the findings do not explicitly show that use of AI causes loneliness or prompts binge drinking.
"The quick takeaway is that the more frequently employees interact with AI systems at work, the more likely they will respond in the following two ways," Tang told Fox News Digital in an email Tuesday.
He said employees could respond in an "adaptive" manner when increasing their use of AI at work, which entails them experiencing "a stronger need to socially connect with other human coworkers and thus prompt them to enact prosocial behaviors towards other human employees at work."
Employees could also respond in a "maladaptive" way, meaning they "experience a stronger feeling of loneliness and thus trigger a series of maladaptive responses after work; consuming more alcohol and having problems falling asleep at home," Tang said.
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Tang said AI systems equipped with human voices to better mimic social interactions could help employees keep loneliness issues at bay, while corporations could limit the amount of time workers use AI. His comments come on the heels of another study out of Denmark that found "charismatic" robots, those that are programmed to speak in a passionate tone, can have positive impact on college students, boosting creativity during group projects.
"Mindfulness programs and other positive interventions also might help relieve loneliness," Tang said in a press release on the study. "AI will keep expanding, so we need to act now to lessen the potentially damaging effects for people who work with these systems."
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