Artificial intelligence (AI) can help employees work faster, but relying too heavily on the technology could prevent some workers from developing the professional judgment needed to advance their careers, Forbes reports.
That risk may be particularly significant for early-career professionals, workplace strategist Nirit Cohen wrote, examining how workers should approach AI at different stages of their careers.
Experienced professionals can use AI to automate tasks they already understand while applying years of judgment and institutional knowledge to the results. They are more likely to recognize when an AI-generated response is technically accurate but incomplete, impractical, or poorly suited to an organization’s needs.
Early-career professionals face a different challenge. By outsourcing assignments to AI, they could bypass work that traditionally helps employees build expertise through mistakes, feedback, and hands-on experience.
Research from Harvard Business School supports the distinction. In a study of 78 workers, researchers compared web analysts with marketing and technology professionals using generative AI to perform unfamiliar tasks. AI helped workers across groups develop ideas and complete work faster, but it did not eliminate the expertise gap.
Marketing professionals, whose existing skills were more closely related to the assigned work, performed nearly as well as web analysts. Technology specialists, whose expertise was further removed from the task, continued to lag in execution despite having access to artificial intelligence.
Researchers described the divide as “knowledge distance,” or the difference between the skills workers already possess and those required for a particular task.
For early-career workers, Cohen recommends focusing on understanding rather than simply producing polished results. Employees should be able to explain an AI-assisted recommendation, identify its underlying assumptions, and defend the work without returning to the tool for help.
Experienced professionals, meanwhile, should consider what judgment they are contributing after delegating work to artificial intelligence rather than simply approving its output.
“AI can accelerate execution,” Cohen wrote. “Your job is to make sure it is also accelerating your expertise rather than helping you bypass it.”
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