Have you heard the buzz about AI?
It’s everywhere. AI, or artificial intelligence bots like ChatGPT, Bard AI, Bing AI, Jasper AI, and a multitude of others are dominating the airwaves. There are artificial intelligence bots that can write your essays for you (schools love that), develop business plans, assess medical symptoms, and more.
The development of working AI looks likely to upend work practices across multiple industries and reinvent our education and medical systems. At this point, it looks like AI will be able to solve most of our problems with the click of a button (and a chirpy “hi!”).
But will it really?
Introducing ‘Technological Solutionism’
A recent article on Slate.com called “The Delusion At The Center of the AI Boom” introduces the concept of ‘technological solutionism,’ which is “the mistaken belief that we can make great progress on alleviating complex dilemmas, if not remedy them entirely, by reducing their core issues to simpler engineering problems.”
Simply put, solutionism is the idea that people are looking for quick, easy, and cheap solutions to not-quick problems.
And company culture is one of them.
Company Culture Is Not Built From An App
In any organization, true culture comes from spending time together (ideally in person, but if not, synchronously online or via phone). Real culture is developed and determined by personal interaction, not just writing or interaction with an app. Using AI bots like Chat GPT or Jasper AI can help with individual work tasks, and even be used to modify workflows and job descriptions.
But they can’t convey the depth of thought and emotion that builds relationships.
Everyone has heard of (or experienced, unfortunately) an organization that claims “Our culture is great! We’re really like family,” but where the employees know that the truth is quite the opposite. You can say all you want about your culture. You can develop apps that monitor culture, claim to develop it, and “bring fun and wellness into work!” (you can find a whole list in this article). But that is trying to outsource the hard work of developing the trust and relationships that determine on-the-ground culture to an app.
Trust and relationships are built on positive interactions. And it is inherently true that if people are spending time looking at an app, they’re not interacting with each other.
Curious to learn how Barometer XP can give your team some meaningful time together, whether virtual or in-person? Email us at info@barometerxp.com.