AI can cause ‘social loafing’ at work: How robots impact different types of workplaces

Anything you can do, a robot could, too — and it could make people lazier.

The corporate phenomenon known as “social loafing” — when a colleague doesn’t work as hard because others will pick up the slack — occurs most commonly in groups of humans whether it be in the office or on a school project.

But as robotics have slowly been integrated into the workplace, researchers investigated its prevalence between humans and automated technology, finding that humans exerted less effort when they could rely on robots to complete their tasks in a group setting.

“Teamwork is a mixed blessing,” study author Dietlind Helene Cymek said in a statement.

“Working together can motivate people to perform well, but it can also lead to a loss of motivation because the individual contribution is not as visible.”

The study, published Wednesday in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, tested the productivity of 42 participants, who were asked to rate their effort and performance after the experiment, by looking at a circuit board for errors for 90 minutes.

Half the participants were told their boards had already been inspected by Panda, a robot, but did not work directly with the machine.

While the time spent inspecting the boards did not differ between the two groups observed, participants who worked with Panda caught fewer errors and seemed “to have looked for defects less attentively than the participants who worked alone.”

Despite the laboratory limitations of the experiment, researchers warned of the potential repercussions of “social loafing,” especially in terms of workplace safety.

“In longer shifts, when tasks are routine and the working environment offers little performance monitoring and feedback, the loss of motivation tends to be much greater,” said study co-author Dr. Linda Onnasch.

“In manufacturing in general, but especially in safety-related areas where double checking is common, this can have a negative impact on work outcomes.”

The study coincides with the introduction of Apollo, Apptronik’s newest employee, who is doing the heavy lifting at the tech company’s warehouse — despite fears that AI technology could replace humans at their jobs.

“Science-fiction has promised us these for a long time,” Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas told Axios.