Harvard, MIT, and Wharton research reveals pitfalls of relying on junior staff for AI training

As corporations race to undertake synthetic intelligence techniques, standard knowledge means that younger, more tech-savvy employees will take the lead in educating their managers the best way to successfully use the highly effective new instruments.

However a new study casts doubt on that assumption on the subject of the rapidly-evolving expertise of generative AI.

The research, performed by lecturers from Harvard Enterprise College, MIT, Wharton, and different establishments in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, discovered that junior workers who experimented with a generative AI system made suggestions for mitigating dangers that ran counter to knowledgeable recommendation. The findings recommend that corporations can’t rely solely on reverse mentoring to make sure the accountable use of AI.

“Our interviews revealed two findings that run counter to the prevailing literature,” wrote the authors. “First, the ways that the juniors really helpful to mitigate their seniors’ considerations ran counter to these really helpful by consultants in GenAI expertise on the time, and so revealed that the junior professionals may not be one of the best supply of experience within the efficient use of this rising expertise for extra senior members.”

Junior consultants wrestle with AI threat mitigation in GPT-4 experiment

The researchers interviewed 78 junior consultants in mid-2023 who had lately participated in an experiment giving them entry to GPT-4, a strong generative AI system, for a enterprise problem-solving activity. The consultants, who lacked technical AI experience, shared ways they’d advocate to alleviate managers’ considerations about dangers.

However the research discovered the junior workers’ threat mitigation ways have been usually grounded in “an absence of deep understanding of the rising expertise’s capabilities,” centered on altering human habits somewhat than AI system design, and centered on project-level interventions somewhat than group or industry-wide options.

Navigating the challenges of generative AI adoption in enterprise

“To clarify how and when junior professionals might fail to be a supply of experience in using an rising expertise for extra senior members, we should keep in mind not solely standing risk, but in addition dangers to valued outcomes,” the researchers wrote, noting AI’s exponential price of change, superhuman capabilities, and reliance on huge quantities of information.

The findings come as corporations grapple with the alternatives and challenges offered by generative AI techniques, which might interact in open-ended dialogue, reply follow-up questions, and help with writing, evaluation, and coding duties. By highlighting the constraints of counting on digital native workers to information AI implementation from the bottom-up, the research underscores the necessity for top-down AI governance, knowledgeable enter, and upskilling throughout all ranges of the group.

“Senior professionals face the twin duty of shortly implementing rising applied sciences in the present day, and anticipating future variations of applied sciences and their implications for each their shoppers and their very own organizations,” the authors famous. “To guide their groups and organizations in grappling with a quickly increasing technological frontier, seniors have to develop a deep understanding of recent applied sciences and their related capabilities.”