>> Karen Parker, editor-in-chief
FROM THE EDITOR
Susan Sutton served as Editor-in-Chief, Integrated Media, of ASI magazine for many years. If you wish to send a letter to the editor, please contact Tom Fowler at fowlert@bnpmedia.com. Letters may be edited for space and clarity.
The Digital Dilemma: Balancing AI's Promise with Human Productivity
T his issue of ASI features what many consider the main trend of our time: digitalization and the move to the ever-increasing use of technology to accomplish tasks and solve problems. As I write this column, we mark the second anniversary since ChatGPT stepped onto the stage with much promise and an equal amount of trepidation about what rapidly evolving AI means for our future. If you attended an industry conference this year, chances are good that at least one session covered the topic of AI and how people in your industry are using it or should be using it. In this issue, we cover digital technologies available to professionals in the adhesives and sealants industry and a roundtable discussion on the future of digitalization in the chemical industry.
As we board the bullet train of AI with all its fancy accouterments, I have observed some side effects of our digital world that I think we should consider. I started thinking about this as I watched my office mate/husband, who also works from our home, during a stressful day during an extremely stressful project launch last year. I walked into his office to see my normally calm husband appearing not so calm. He was using a collaboration tool, essentially a 2023 business version of America Online’s Instant Messenger, and he was getting slammed with messages, all from people who needed him to answer questions, all urgent. He would respond to one message, only to get interrupted by another message. He would be engaging in three conversations with the same person discussing the same topic in three different text threads. It was digital chaos. I assume since the software he was using is broadly used in corporate America, this is not a unique example.
As I thought about this experience, I compared those digital experiences to traditional in-person office culture. Were he in an office and people needed to talk to him, they would walk up to his desk, see that he was already speaking with someone else, and either come back later or patiently wait for their turn to ask their question. Were there teams of people discussing one problem or another, they would be in a conference room together, and because the laws of physics require that one person can only occupy one space at a time, they would be in one meeting, not many.
Also – this doesn’t even consider that the person being constantly interrupted with business AIM messages is also trying to accomplish their own set of tasks, independent of constant digital interruptions from coworkers. Again, were that person in a physical office, it would be clear that they were working on another task, and perhaps the temptation to interrupt would be tempered.
It is tempting to see digital technologies such as business collaboration tools as another answer the tech gods have given us to be more productive, more responsive, just more. And while these tools can certainly be useful, we need to consider how such tools ignore the way human brains work. Because, it turns out, human brains work much better, one might say efficiently, when they are focusing on one task and not many.
Research from UC Irvine found that the average time it takes to recover full concentration after being interrupted is 23 minutes. Furthermore, the length of interruption that causes people to commit two times the number of computer errors when completing a task is only 2.8 seconds, less than the time it takes to read an email. We currently live in a business culture where multi-tasking is considered the preferred way of working, but studies like the one at UC Irvine suggest that doing more than one complex task at a time harms productivity. Additional studies suggest that too much multi-tasking and too many digital interruptions lead to impaired cognitive performance and memory retention and a reduction in overall mental well-being. While the digital tools we have at our disposal are very useful, we should be mindful of the ways they can interrupt normal cognitive functions.
One of the main takeaways from the many conference presentations on AI that I attended this year was this simple fact: as good as the technology is, it requires human expertise to guide and verify. As we speed down the digital highway, it is important to remember that our brains, developed over many, many years, hold secrets and wisdom that the computer brains currently being developed don’t understand or appreciate. This technology is good, it is the future, but we should always consider how it impacts our own, extraordinary brains.