Centaurs, Cyborgs, and Consultants: The New Face of AI at Work

AI is here. Full stop. It’s not going away.

You remember when we first got web search: Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Yahoo, Google... we all started thinking in keywords, and that was really helpful. Then came schema and semantic markup (if you know what that is, high five, fellow geek). It was all retrieval of information based on keywords. And it was a glorious invention that got us PPC, Organic Search, all of Google, and so much more.?

Well, today we’ve got AI.

And now instead of in keywords, we’re thinking in “Prompts.”

Gone are the days where you searched for:

pet store parakeet cage open now

Today you’re prompting AI with:

I need to make a DIY cage for an injured parakeet that my 5 year old brought home from the park. I have a bucket, packing tape, and a spoon. Help me create a cage that will last until the morning, and make my kid proud of me.

That’s a whole nother mindset, eh?

Switch over to your work brain for a second.?

In Sharepoint, you’re dropping in some keyword into the search bar:?

2025 Marketing Roadmap Henry McNeeler PowerPoint October

Or, you prompt your company’s Copilot:

Draft a summary of the 2025 Marketing Roadmap built by Henry McNeeler. List action items, owners, due dates, and provide me with a link to the file.

Boom. Magic.        

Like I said, AI is here.

Its impact on the workplace is nuanced and complex, sure. But oh boy is it fascinating.?

The good people at Boston Consulting Group (you might know them as BCG) and a few academic researchers did a bit of a deep dive into this new AI-powered workplace. And as you might expect, it’s not straightforward. Nothing is.

The Experiment: Real Consultants, Real Tasks

BCG dove right into their bread and butter. They had their own consultants work through realistic tasks which were pulled straight from their day-to-day. Some consultants had access to GPT-4, while others banked on their prior expertise. The results? Statistically significant, to say the least.?

AI = Productivity

For tasks within AI's comfort zone, like creative brainstorming, analysis, and persuasive writing, here’s what they found:

• Consultants using AI were, on average, 25% faster
• They completed 12% more tasks
• The quality of their work was judged to be 40% higher by independent human graders

And here's the kicker: The biggest performance boost—a whopping 43% increase—came from previously lower-performing consultants (yes, that was a dimension in their study, of course it was). For that group, it was like having a mentor in their back pocket.

AI, the new grand equalizer?

Does AI stumble? You bet it does.?

Not all tasks thrown at it played to AI's strengths, though. There was one complex business case study that had both quantitative analysis and qualitative insights from interviews. The cohort using AI struggled a bit:

• They were 19% less likely to reach the correct conclusion
• Their work looked polished on the surface, sure but it missed critical details

And that’s the central point of the study: AI is utterly fantastic at synthesizing information, but it can't replace human judgment, real-world experience, and the ability to connect those subtle dots.

Funny story:

I had AI summarize a meeting for me. The summary said something about a coworker needed to follow-up on free shipping. I tilted my head a lil bit when I saw that. I recall she spoke about discounted shipping, yes, but free? That’s a bold claim to make. So I asked AI to show me the evidence of this free shipping bit. And it returned the exact text where the coworker spoke about shipping discounts for volume orders, which included "up to free shipping for the right sized order." The AI inferred that free shipping was a thing (Amazon influence?), and told me free shipping was an action item in my meeting summary. No bueno.         

The Human Element: You’re not being replaced

Despite AI's objectively impressive abilities, the study made it clear:

the human element remains crucial.

A person’s ability to think critically, understand context, nuance, tone, facial expressions, body language, and make informed decisions is irreplaceable (for now). You shouldn't view AI as a threat, it's an indispensable tool that will absolutely augment your capabilities, not replace them.

Key areas to not trust AI (yet): tasks that need nuanced interpretation of qualitative data, legacy, tribal, or contextual knowledge like industry-specific experience.?This is a slippery slope for AI. Tread carefully.

Yes, AI can process huge amounts of information quickly—in seconds—but it's you, the human professional, who can truly understand the implications of that information.

And it’s you, and only you, who can make strategic decisions based on that information.

So, no, AI isn’t going to replace you (yet).

(I’m having fun with that yet stuff (as you can tell (and, I’m having fun with parentheses, too)))        

Centaurs and Cyborgs: Ancient characters in the modern day

The study discussed used two fun analogies to describe consultants who successfully navigated the AI tools:

1. Centaurs

Like the mythical half-human, half-horse creatures, this lot of consultants strategically divided tasks.

They used AI for heavy lifting like research summaries and initial brainstorming, but applied their human expertise to nuanced analysis and final decision-making. The Centaur consultants knew how to draw clear lines between any AI-assisted tasks and tasks that needed a human’s mind.

2. Cyborgs

This group of consultants was able to achieve seamless integration with AI.

They constantly intertwined their work with AI. When building a PowerPoint, AI suggested phrasing and refined arguments in real-time. When analyzing data, AI generated visualizations on the fly and helped flag outliers, errors in code, and more. The Cyborgs know how to meld real-time assistance and insights into their workflow.

There are pro’s and con’s to each. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle and would be subjective to the task, person, and circumstance at hand.

In the end, though, it’s clear:

leveraging AI is significantly more in your favor than not.

Your AI Future is What You Make of It

This research shows that AI isn't here to replace us (yet). Some people needed to hear that. This research was quite the advocate of AI as a powerful partner, but clear that it needs thoughtful collaboration. The key here isn't to fear AI and therefore shy away from its use. Instead, the key here is to dive in and become smarter as a result of it. Make it a tool you wield in your favor. Because, if we’re candid here, if you don’t wield it, the person replacing you will.?

AI continues to evolve at breakneck speeds.

You don’t need to evolve just as quickly, but you do need to evolve.

It’s essential, critical, for you to adopt, adapt, and learn how to work effectively with this new tech.

Remember, AI isn’t going to replace you. A person who knows how to use AI better than you is going to replace you.?

Here are your takeaways from BCG's research:

1. AI can and will significantly boost both your productivity and quality in certain tasks, especially for those folks who might be struggling a bit.
2. AI isn't infallible—it can and will stumble on complex and nuanced tasks, especially those that need human judgment.
3. The most successful professionals of today, and increasingly of tomorrow, are adopting AI.

Stay curious, my friends. Stay adaptable, and keep experimenting. The future workplace isn't being taken over by AI—it’s being taken over by people who leverage these tools in fast, powerful ways, for their own career development and growth, and to propel their organizations to the next level.

We’re living in exciting times of Centaurs and Cyborgs, and you get to be both. A Centaiborg! You see the “ai” in there, right? That little pun is how you know AI didn’t write this ???

Hashtags for the bots

#ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #Innovation #ProductivityHacks #BusinessStrategy

Source BCG Research Paper:

Dell'Acqua, Fabrizio and McFowland III, Edward and Mollick, Ethan R. and Lifshitz-Assaf, Hila and Kellogg, Katherine and Rajendran, Saran and Krayer, Lisa and Candelon, Fran?ois and Lakhani, Karim R., Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality (September 15, 2023). Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Mgt. Unit Working Paper No. 24-013, The Wharton School Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4573321 or https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4573321