My manager is a robot. What will the consequences be? Part 2

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This will be the second part of my thoughts on the consequences of replacing a human manager with a robot. Without introduction we begin.

There was first, second, third….

Fourth, the artificial manager will completely change the interactions in the work team. For now, for the sake of simplicity, I will assume in my posts that only the manager will be a robot, and the rest of the team members will continue to be human. However, let’s imagine for a moment that in a team of several people we also have other combinations: there is an artificial manager and an artificial team member, and 4 people are humans. Or how about the other way around – 4 team members who are robots and only 1 human?

We wrote an article about this with Dr. Adrian Pyszka in 2022, from which comes this graphic showing the possible evolution of the composition of the employee team.

Figure 1 Possible configurations for employee team development with AI

You can find the article at this link:

https://pz.wz.uw.edu.pl/resources/html/article/details?id=231733&language=en

or read it directly:

Flak, O., Pyszka, A., Evolution From Human Virtual Teams to Artificial Virtual Teams.

How much an artificial manager will change human behavior I will write about in separate posts in a few weeks. Right now, just imagine what pressure of rationality and hiding one’s emotions will be felt by the only human in a robot team!

Fifth, once the artificial manager sits behind the boss’s desk, the problem of the manager’s omniscience will arise. Over hundreds of years, the importance of the boss’s knowledge has diminished. One can imagine that a few hundred years ago a blacksmith in a village, running a workshop and employing his apprentices, was infallible. He had unquestionable authority of knowledge. In the 20th century, the situation changed, as products and services were no longer understood by one man – the manager became the knowledge coordinator of many other specialists. However, ChatGPT, despite the fact that he often pours water or simply lies, returns to the role of omnibus interlocutor. If he became a manager and knew even more, history would come full circle….

Sixth, not obvious, but… in my opinion, the most important. If your manager was a robot he wouldn’t like you! That doesn’t mean at all that he would hate you, just rather – at least in light of the current understanding of artificial intelligence – he wouldn’t have any feelings for you. Think what would happen… This was the thought that popped into my head in 2007: what if a manager had no feelings for his employees? And that’s where my adventure with artificial management began.

You can learn more about the negative consequences associated with artificial intelligence in management in this video: