Why Older Employees Shouldn’t Learn GenAI from Younger Tech Savvy Staff
On-the-job learning may be risky!
There’s a common misconception that younger GenAI-friendly people will simply teach older professionals how to use GenAI on the job.
This Harvard Business School paper shows that this is not only unlikely but also dangerous.
While younger employees may embrace GenAI more readily than more senior professionals, that doesn’t mean that they know how to manage AI risk or even have a solid grounding in the technology.
The reality is that liking and using GenAI does not make younger users GenAI teachers, no more than me liking and playing a guitar makes me a guitar teacher.
But it’s not all junior staff's fault! Senior staff members suffer from “status threat,” a sense of being threatened by junior staff trying to teach them something new, inhibiting learning.
👉TAKEAWAYS
Researchers studied GenAI risk mitigation tactics proposed by younger users and found them highly flawed:
#1: Lacking deep understanding the characteristics of the emerging technology
Juniors’ recommendations for mitigating GenAI output risks related to accuracy, explainability, and contextualization demonstrated their lack of a deep understanding of GenAI technology’s capabilities. Juniors, as novice users at the time of the study, regularly proposed solutions to these acknowledged problems that contrasted GenAI experts.
#2: Overestimating the potential of changing human routines (rather than system design)
Juniors also overestimated the potential for mitigating GenAI output risks related to accuracy, explainability, and contextualization by changing human routines (rather than system design). They preferred to change the human rather than the machine contrary to expert recommendations.
#3: Overestimating the potential of intervening at the project level (rather than system deployer- or ecosystem-level)
Juniors overestimate the potential for intervening at the project level by imposing GenAI use conditions or having managers check output (project level) rather than at the system deployer or ecosystem level, as recommended by AI professionals.
👊STRAIGHT TALK👊
This paper is priceless and shows that younger employees may use GenAI more than senior professionals, but that doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing!
The study accurately states: “Juniors may not be the best source of expertise regarding mitigating risks related to using an emerging technology.”
Consider a scenario with a typical middle-aged manager relying on a junior GenAI friendly junior employee for advice about how it can be used in the workplace.
First, the senior manager must overcome their “status threat,” which makes for an uncomfortable environment.
Then, the advice they get from junior GenAI-loving employees may be wrong!
So the concept that older managers will pick up GenAI skills “on the job” through collaboration with younger employees is thoroughly busted.
What do you think?
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