Can AI become a team member?

How successfully are companies already using AI?

In November 2024, the Federal Statistical Office published the following press release: “In 2024, large companies with 250 or more employees will use AI technologies much more frequently than medium-sized and small companies. Every second large company (48%) uses AI, but only one in four (28%) medium-sized companies with 50 to 249 employees and one in six (17%) small companies with 10 to 49 employees. In all size categories, AI is being used more frequently in companies compared to the previous year.

AI is becoming more and more established in companies, but also in other areas. From students having their bachelor’s thesis written artificially to fake videos on X, formerly Twitter – everyone has heard about the development of artificial intelligence around the world in the news at the latest. AI has already arrived in many everyday lives – and well before the results that are ultimately played out to us. This raises the question: how should companies prepare for the fact that this tool is already part of young people’s daily lives?

How companies integrate AI into their work 

The use of artificial intelligence in companies is no longer limited to programmes such as Chat GPT, which are used in a similar way to search engines. The Federal Statistical Office writes: “Companies that use AI most frequently use technologies for analysing written language or text mining (48%), technologies for speech recognition (47%) and technologies for generating natural language (34%). These technologies are primarily used for marketing or sales (33%), for production or service processes (25%), for the organisation of company administration processes or management (24%) and for accounting, controlling or financial management (24%).”

Areas of responsibility that are covered by AI in companies are therefore increasingly overlapping with those that were previously carried out purely by humans. AI can now take over essential tasks that were previously carried out by a colleague, acting as a constant in everyday working life.

Can artificial intelligence also become a team member in the company?  

In order to find an answer to this question, it is first necessary to look at a team in general. How do you become a team member, i.e. what actually makes a team member?

AXA statistics from 2022 show the results of a survey of small and medium-sized companies in German- and French-speaking Switzerland on the question: “What qualities and skills do you consider particularly important in your employees?”

It is clear that skills such as independence, flexibility and the ability to work in a team are the most important for respondents when it comes to their employees. Can an AI system replicate this in a company?

In Austria, a similar survey was conducted by MAKAM Research in 2018, which asked respondents the question: “Which of the following characteristics do you particularly value in your employees?”.

Here too, it is clear that the ability to work in a team, honesty and loyalty are the qualities that are particularly valued in employees.

It can therefore be stated that for the majority, it is probably personal qualities that are important to them when working with their team colleagues. The term teamwork skills stands out in particular, as it ranks among the top in both Austria and Switzerland.

If these characteristics lead to the ability to work in a team and this ability to work in a team is what makes a good team member for humans, could an AI that fulfils these characteristics not also be a team member?

Can a company trust AI?

It is obvious that AI is reliable and cooperative; after all, these systems were developed to reliably fulfil orders. However, the issue of trust in AI by companies and their teams is the subject of much debate.

To what extent can you trust an artificial programme that has access to billions of pieces of data and is constantly learning?

A statistic from Initiative D21 from 2023 shows that trust in AI applications in Germany grows with the generations. While only 16% of respondents from the baby boomer generation stated that they had complete or mostly complete trust in AI, the figure for Generation Z is 42%, almost three times as high.  What remains unclear, however, is what people have confidence in. Is it that the AI will complete the task set or that it will not pass on confidential information, for example? However, such questions could just as easily be asked of a human team member. So perhaps AI in companies would not be a worse team member?

Do we automatically place more trust in humans even though they do not have a predictable algorithm that is calculable down to the smallest detail? The question of what ultimately distinguishes artificial intelligence from a human being is unavoidable when dealing with this topic, even if companies want to integrate AI even more deeply.