Imagine you have a bunch of teams, some with AI, some without, and some where everyone gets their own AI. Researchers ran a big experiment with over 400 people to see what actually happens when you mix and match humans and AI in different ways.
Here’s what they found: Teams with AI did better than teams without it. But giving every team member their own AI didn’t help at all. In fact, it was better to have just one or two people as the team’s 'AI experts' than to spread the AI around. More AI doesn’t always mean better results.
If you put one person with an AI up against a regular team, they do about the same. But a team with a couple of AI-savvy people still comes out on top. So, the magic isn’t in going solo with AI, but in having a team that knows how to use it well.
So why does this matter? Because it turns a lot of our usual thinking about AI upside down.
Instead of giving everyone an AI license, pick one or two people on your team to become the real AI pros. Let them get really good at asking the right questions, figuring out how to use AI in your work, and sharing what they find. They become your team’s AI translators, just like a tech lead helps everyone talk to the engineers.
For some jobs, like writing reports or pulling together research, one person with an AI can do as much as a whole team. But when you need lots of different viewpoints or real teamwork, a group with a couple of AI experts still does better than a lone wolf.
Forget about those one-size-fits-all AI training sessions. Instead, train a few people to be your team’s AI coordinators. They’ll turn your team’s questions into smart AI prompts and bring the answers back to everyone else.
The big idea? Don’t spread AI thin. Focus your expertise. Figure out which jobs really need a team, and which ones a single person (with AI) can handle just fine.
