Persistence, Emergence, and Fadeout: Influence of AI Teammates on the Salience of Human Identities at Work

Abstract

Increasingly communicative and autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are becoming essential partners in workspaces and changing how people work. However, it is not yet well understood how introducing AI teammates into working contexts may impact how people see themselves—especially as AI imitates human intelligence to perform tasks usually done by humans. To address this gap, this experimental study examined how the ontological category of office-work teammates (human or AI) may influence the salience of people’s identities. Participants were assigned to work with a teammate (human or AI) in an office-process simulation; they named salient general and work-related identities before and after completing the simulation. Findings indicate AI teammates alter the salience of some human identities, as some new identities emerge and others fade as irrelevant—however, some identities persist or are reframed as people make sense of the work arrangement.