{"id":1200,"date":"2026-04-09T11:31:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/future-proof-with-ai\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:31:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:31:40","slug":"back-to-the-beginnings-of-ai-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/future-proof-with-ai\/back-to-the-beginnings-of-ai-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Beginnings of AI at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em>What a Landmark AI Study Tells Us About When to Trust, and When Not to Trust, AI<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\t\t<div class=\"embed-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t<figure class=\"wp-block-embed wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"> \n\t\t\t\t<div\n\t\t\t\t\tclass=\"rkv-video-placeholder \"\n\t\t\t\t\tstyle=\"background-image:url(https:\/\/i.vimeocdn.com\/video\/2143539540-e3a762aceb4e9a1d261c731ae42fd43cc35ca1b7c55f241ad94c916a143cb014-d_295x166?region=us);aspect-ratio:16 \/ 9\"\n\t\t\t\t\tdata-provider=\"vimeo\"\n\t\t\t\t\tdata-video-id=\"1181231763\"\n\t\t\t\t><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\n\n<p>In September 2023, a working paper out of Harvard Business School landed at an unusually consequential moment. Generative AI had been publicly available for less than a year, organizations were scrambling to understand its implications, and almost no rigorous field evidence existed on how it actually affected professional performance. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1287\/orsc.2025.21838\">Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality<\/a>\u201d offered exactly that. Now, in March 2026, that research has been formally published in the peer-reviewed journal <a href=\"https:\/\/pubsonline.informs.org\/journal\/orsc\"><em>Organization Science<\/em><\/a>. To mark this milestone, we\u2019re revisiting the study and its findings. The questions it set out to answer, what AI actually does to knowledge worker performance, where it helps, where it hurts, and why, were foundational then. They remain foundational now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why This Matters<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For executives and leaders, this paper remains foundational because it frames AI adoption as a problem of decisions, strategy, and execution. The lesson is not that AI is universally good or dangerously flawed, it\u2019s that leaders have to understand where, in a workflow, AI strengthens performance and where it creates deceptive failures. This means training people to exercise judgment rather than outsource it, and recognizing that polished output is not the same as sound reasoning. How will you guide your team along the jagged frontier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/back-to-the-beginnings-of-ai-at-work\/\">Link to the D^3 Insight Article<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1287\/orsc.2025.21838\">Link to the Research Paper<\/a><br>Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with D^3 news and research: <a href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/#join-our-community\">https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/#join-our-community<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a Landmark AI Study Tells Us About When to Trust, and When Not to Trust, AI. AI Work Landmark Study<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19452,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"rkv_hide_featured_image":false,"rkv_hide_page_title":false,"rkv_hide_abstract_shapes":true,"rkv_reduce_header":false,"hbsd3_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/1181231763","hbsd3_featured_media_url_autoplay":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"tax_cop":[],"rkv-people-shadow":[8],"insight_type":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Back to the Beginnings of AI at Work - Future Proof with AI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/back-to-the-beginnings-of-ai-at-work\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back to the Beginnings of AI at Work - Future Proof with AI\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What a Landmark AI Study Tells Us About When to Trust, and When Not to Trust, AI. 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