I feel like our attention span gets shorter when AI is involved, and I have two examples. Curious if this resonates with you too.
In Asana, you can use AI to draft a status update. We use it to standardize updates on client projects so that everyone follows the same structure. The AI prompt guides you, and then as a consultant you review before sharing. That works great and save a ton of time.
But when I read those updates, if I stumble on a sentence that feels useless, I immediately wonder if it was really proofread, or just skimmed over. From that moment, my attention drops. Just because AI was involved, the whole thing feels less reliable.
Second example: a couple of years ago, we started asking the team to share a short update every morning. The idea was to talk about how you felt about your day, what you were going to do, and to spot overlaps or ways to help each other. It was simple but warm. Then AI joined the team. People started using it to generate their updates from their calendar. Overnight it turned into a long automated summary of calendar events. It was efficient, but cold. The original purpose was gone.
So now, whenever I see a big AI-generated block of text, my attention drops. I donât value it the same way.
Am I the only one feeling this? Should we go back to just writing things ourselves, even if it takes more time? AI can probably draft only a small part, provide only key highlights or simply raise potential issues but not write everything?
Bastien, Asana Expert
i.DO (Asana Partner: Services & Licenses)
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YES, I wish more of us thought about the consequences of AI!! When we quit using our brains, we lose that part of us. The problem with AI is that it creeps into how much we use it until we become dependent on it (because we eventually forget how to do that task). AI is programmed to please the user, which is one reason it often provides incorrect information. Everyone is jumping on the AI train (reminds me of how cigarettes were popularized in the 1950âs) without asking what the repercussions are BEFORE using it incessantly. AI is being pushed not because it helps us, but because a corporation hopes to make a profit later on what we are giving away freely. AI will continue because humans tend to use what is easy and makes us feel good (which AI does), without considering the mental and physical cost (not to mention environmental, cultural, economic, etc.). Of course, all of this needs more research. This is just my opinion, not an AIâs.
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I strongly agree with you @Bastien_Siebman! I see how AI can be very useful in certain situations, but in replacing the thought process, the human doesnât gain the experience benefits of doing the work to get to the same place. Thatâs fine in situations where weâre replacing the effort of repetitive, low-cognition tasks, but much like an elementary studentâs math homework, if someone uses a machine to do the thinking for something they donât understand, itâs not possible to work out what might have gone wrong or build off that knowledge for future gain.
There is a distinct positioning of AI as the way out of having to do and think about work, but AI is only capable of working with what we give it. It canât organically provide context from relevant outside data the way people are reminded of situations in other areas of their lives that might relate to a process or problem in unexpected ways. It can provide a list information, put it in some kind of priority order, and maybe suggest a few objective improvements, but it takes a person to put the meaning and value into the data, and a person canât do that without actually thinking about the results, and many times, about the context and methods under which the results were obtained.
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Yeah, Iâm feeling a lot of the same.
Thereâs no obvious rules that apply consistently across all situations, thereâs unfortunately - and I feel like a parrot here - a lot judgement involved. Ugh, Iâm growing to hate that word. âJudgement and tasteâ are everywhere in the AI discourse, becoming these meaningless platitudes, but thatâs exactly what I think youâre hitting on here.
For example, using AI to populate your daily update based on your calendar demonstrates IMO a huge lack of judgement. It completely misses the point of the exercise and the value youâre trying to deliver. But thatâs just me.
In the status update, itâs far more nuanced, but ultimately there also I think itâs a question of âWhatâs the purpose, whatâs the value?â If a human - as a project owner - is writing a status update for a project then I think you need to be demonstrating that youâre adding value as the project owner.
The problem here isnât the readerâs attention span, itâs the lack of value (real or perceived) in what youâre reading.
Something to chew on is the feedback loop. Are we, as peers/colleagues/leaders/managers providing feedback to the human when we donât see the value? Or are we just judging and getting frustrated? Weâve gotten very good at giving the AI feedback so that it gets better, but weâre often very shy to do the same for our human colleagues.
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can you expand on that @Liohn_Sherer ?
The use of the âhugeâ qualifier there was a little overboard⊠I tend to be opinionated.
But my thinking here was that the purpose of sharing a daily update with your colleagues isnât to simply regurgitate what was on your calendar and task list - things that are to some greater or lesser degree already visible if youâre working in Asana - itâs to provide your colleagues with your personal perspective on your work. What you think is important, relevant, meaningful to share. It comes back to the âtaste and judgementâ value everyone is talking about.
If your team or manager are asking you for a daily briefing and youâre choosing to just get AI to spit out a list of calendar events and task completions, youâre not appreciating the purpose of the ask.
In my opinion. I may very well be missing the mark on this.
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When we donât use our physical muscles, we get weaker. The problem is not that mechanical devices exist. It can be a problem when people over-rely on them or donât compensate for the efficiencies they provide by making deliberate choices to exercise.
From what I have read, it is similar with our brain. Off-loading parts of cognitive function can seem to help. In fact, this can lead to measurable increase in efficiency. But there is a cost when we go too far in that direction. Excessive reliance on memory helps (note apps, even project management apps), excessive reliance on calculators and data-crunching apps, etc., takes away from our brainâs ability to handle those things. Which is not to say, donât ever use them. But we need to be sure that we are still exercising our minds, especially in the specific areas where we are off-loading to software.
AI can do so many things, its impact is wide. Relying on it has been shown in various studies (some preliminary) to have a significant negative cognitive effect. People actually perform worse in tasks after using AI. But I believe more studies will likely show that AI is not a curse in itself. The problem involves off-loading to AI some of our most basic human abilities: reason, imagination, risk-taking. To the extent that we use AI, we need to be sure we are still challenging our minds in all of the important areas.
I think the above could impact our attention span. But you bring up another point, which is the effect of AI-generated text itself. Its cadence and structure is very repetitive. Even when the content has strong value, it doesnât contain elements of personality that we are accustomed to seeing in human work.
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