When AI becomes a team member: Organizational problem-solving and AI agency in speculative fiction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to play a key role in the future of work, enhancing organizations’ capabilities for identifying, analysing and solving complex problems. The most promising potential of AI lies in the augmentation of team’s problem solving capabilities, rather than in the replacement of individuals. This study provides novel insights in how AI can become such an integrated team-member in joint problem-solving in organizations by turning to a novel data source which allows to observe advanced AI “in action”: speculative fiction. Through the analysis of cinematic depiction of human-AI interactions in organizational problem solving, we identified four types of roles assumed by the AI, namely a) responsive, b) proactive, c) collaborative, and d) autonomous. We furthermore point to the differences in social dynamics, following a categorization of these roles as predictable and unpredictable. We argue that predictable AI behaviour leads to lower tensions in the interaction, however at the loss of the potential to challenge the pre-conceptions of the human counterpart and thereby to trigger alternative problem-solving approaches.