Digital coworker: Human-AI collaboration in work environment, on the example of virtual assistants for management professions

Abstract

Dominant opinion in the general public is that work automation will presumably hold negative societal implications, such as job loss, which often causes fear and misunderstanding. Contrarily to such an attitude, the approach we took in this paper is that people will experience rather positive effects of work automation, thanks to collaboration with artificial intelligence using virtual assistants. The quantitative experimental study was a business problem simulation. Participants were asked to perform tasks of a marketing manager in order to prepare a marketing campaign for a new product. Control group participants performed these tasks on their own, while experimental group participants did them in collaboration with a virtual chatbot-like assistant created specifically for this simulation. A total of 20 people participated in the study. A relevant difference in performance was observed between the groups, n = 20, t(18) = 5.25, p < 0.001. Participants collaborating with a virtual assistant achieved a 57% higher productivity (measured by tasks done) than those working on their own. Furthermore, in a post-study survery they assessed their productivity higher and were more satisfied with their performance. Results confirmed the hypothesis, proving that human-AI collaboration increased productivity within the studied sample.