AI提效但可能让工人变笨,过度依赖反伤长远生产力。
The Augmentation Trap: AI Productivity and the Cost of Cognitive Offloading

- 建模分析AI使用强度与技能退化间的动态权衡
- 发现短期提效强于长期失能时仍会采用AI,导致长期产出下降
- 揭示管理者短视或外部价值偏差时,工人反被AI伤害
实验表明AI工具可提升员工生产力,但也可能导致持续依赖使专业能力衰退。当专业知识与AI互补时,这一权衡尤为显著。本文构建一个动态模型,决策者在时间维度上权衡工作技能被替代的AI使用强度,以换取即时效率。将工具增效分解为与技能无关和随技能增长两部分。模型得出三结论:第一,即便预见技能衰退,只要前期收益超过长期成本,仍理性采纳AI,但会降低长期生产力;按长期影响可将部署分为五类,区分有益与有害应用。第二,当管理者短视或技能具外部价值时,存在激励错配,导致员工使用AI后反而比不用更差,即‘增强陷阱’。第三,当AI强烈替代专业能力时,可能造成永久性分化:高技能者实现潜能,低技能者持续退化。管理者微小激励差异即可决定工人走向。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Experimental evidence suggests that AI tools raise worker productivity, but also that sustained offloading can erode expertise. This creates a tradeoff when expertise is a complement to AI. To explore the consequences of this tradeoff, we develop a dynamic model in which a decision-maker chooses the intensity of practice-displacing AI offloading for a worker over time, trading immediate productivity against the erosion of worker skill. We decompose the tool's productivity effect into two components, one independent of worker expertise and one that scales with it. The model produces three main results. First, a decision-maker who fully anticipates skill erosion still rationally adopts AI when front-loaded gains outweigh long-run skill costs, lowering long-run productivity. The decomposition sorts deployments into five regions by their long-run effect, separating beneficial from harmful adoption. Second, the tradeoff introduces the potential for misaligned incentives to harm workers. When managers are short-termist or worker skill has external value, AI use can leave the worker worse off than with no AI, the outcome we call the augmentation trap. Third, when AI substitutes strongly enough for expertise, offloading can generate permanent divergence, with high-skill workers realizing their potential and low-skill workers deskilling. Small differences in managerial incentives can determine which path a worker takes.
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