Image Credit: Bing AI

Artificial intelligence, and in particular ChatGPT has obviously really broken onto the scene lately. People really are up in arms about how it is impacting the world. Most of the mainstream news stories focus on how it can be used for plagiarism, fraud, or other nefarious actions (ex. Hamid, 2023; Wirth, Gephart, Healy, and Winer, 2023). A small minority (mostly entrepreneurs and tech people ex. Ethan Mollick) on the other hand are discussing its advantages. And this has led to most of the American public seeing this type of technology as dangerous, or at the very least not ready for prime time yet.

This is negativity bias.

Negativity bias is a well-known social phenomenon where people pay attention to information that indicates that something is bad over something that is good (Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998). From a biological perspective this was part of our highly successful adaptation to our environments. Paying attention to that lion charging (clearly a bad thing) helps us avoid dangerous situations that would put us in harm’s way.

That said, we rarely face that type of danger in the modern world, however the human tendency persists because it is encoded into our DNA. But is a major underlying factor as why we are resistant to change. Because change is different, it is seen as negative. And therefore, to protect ourselves, we have a natural tendency to avoid change.

But clearly there are those among us who have a different makeup or choose to overcome our DNA through learning. These are people we often label as “optimists” or “change makers” or “influencers”.

Or guess who?

Leaders.

The cat is out of the bag with artificial intelligence, organizations are already relying on it and improving it. That is because leaders in successful organizations don’t let negativity bias get in their way. They see the future and ride the wave of change to a better future.

References:

Hamid, J. (2023). AI tech is sparking fear among Americans – Why? (msn.com)

Ito, T. A., Larsen, J. T., Smith, N. K., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1998). Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: The negativity bias in evaluative categorizations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(4), 887–900.

Wirth, T., Gephardt, R., Healey, K., & Winer, J.M. (2023 April 17). Artificial Intelligence Poses a Huge Threat. It’s Time to Put a Seatbelt on It | Opinion (msn.com)