Words Also Work: The Dual Effect of AI Talk

It has been well documented that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) greatly affects employees’ sense of uncertainty. We argue that talking about AI (AI talk hereafter) is a natural way for individual to cope with such uncertainty. However, existing literature has neglected the proactivity of this coping behavior and its potential dual effect. Drawing from self-regulatory focus theory, we thus aim to explore how AI talk exerts influence on employees’ self-concepts (i.e., situational regulatory focus) and subsequent behaviors. We conducted a two-wave questionnaire survey with a sample of 312 employees on three automatic companies. Results demonstrated that AI talk could, on one hand, induce employees’ situational promotion focus and thus increase their innovative behavior, and, on the other hand, stimulate their situational prevention focus and thus increase faking behavior. Additionally, employees’ chronic regulatory focus plays moderating role on the relationship above. Specifically, we found that for individuals with low chronic promotion focus, their situation promotion focus and innovative behavior increase as AI talk increases, and for individuals with low chronic prevention focus, their situation prevention focus and faking behavior increase as AI talk increases. We discussed theoretical and practical implications of the findings followed by future research directions.