Navigating GenAI in the workplace: skills transformation & tension

Abstract

By automating the content creation process, Generative AI is reshaping creative work, but its impact on knowledge workers remains underexplored, which this study seeks to examine. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 knowledge workers, this study examines what is being transformed in the workplace and how these shifts are being perceived by the knowledge workers who use GenAI. Using Social Shaping of Technology (SST) as a conceptual lens to understand the interaction between technology and knowledge workers, the study finds that participants perceived GenAI as an efficient tool that provides cognitive relief and enhances productivity during times of resource constraint. Tensions also arose around authenticity, creativity, a sense of fulfillment, and the perception of effort. The adoption of GenAI has created downstream labor and demand for new skills as it shifts knowledge workers’ roles away from creator to editor/fact-checker while creating tension as participants balance their desire for efficiency with fears of diminished creativity and domain knowledge, skills atrophy, and threats to content ownership.