This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Artificial intelligence may be making employees faster and more productive, but it could also be quietly damaging their careers. A new study led by Samuel Meyers, a Ph.D. student, together with his adviser Dr.
Yochanan Bigman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Roman Briker of WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany, suggests that workers who use ChatGPT and other AI tools may pay an unexpected professional price: their managers are less likely to trust them. The research, published in the journal The Leadership Quarterly, reveals that supervisors consistently place less trust in employees who rely on artificial intelligence to complete their work, even when using such technology is not explicitly prohibited.
Across six studies, the researchers examined how employees' use of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, influences their supervisors' trust and subsequent professional evaluations. In one experiment, participants acting as supervisors were asked to decide whether to trust an employee's report about time spent completing a task or verify it themselves. The supervisors knew whether the employee had produced the work independently or used AI.
The results were striking: employees who completed the work themselves had a 68% chance of earning their supervisors' trust, compared with just 24% when they used AI. Importantly, supervisors were not evaluating the quality of the finished work. Their decisions were based on knowing how it had been produced, suggesting that the use of AI itself can influence judgments about an employee's trustworthiness.
The researchers also compared AI-assisted work with work copied from another person. While using AI reduced trust compared with independent work, it was still viewed more favorably than plagiarism. The implications could extend far beyond everyday workplace relationships.
Additional experiments showed that lower supervisory trust was associated with poorer evaluations of employee performance, reduced perceptions of employees' contributions to the organization and lower perceived suitability for promotion. "AI is changing not only how we work, but also how we judge the people we work with," said Bigman. "An employee may use AI to produce better work more efficiently yet still lose their manager's trust simply because AI was involved.
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