AI tools from Microsoft and Google are just streamlining middle management, leading AI expert says: WSJ

• Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini have been advertised as AI-powered productivity tools.
• But Ethan Mollick, a leading AI expert, has a more cynical view of the products.
• Copilot automates middle management while Gemini makes surveillance easier, he told WSJ.

Microsoft and Google rolled out their own AI-powered productivity tools last year, touting them as products that could revolutionize how people work.

But one leading AI expert thinks otherwise.

Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, has been tapped by the White House, JP Morgan, Google, and many others for his insights on artificial intelligence.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mollick said Microsoft’s Copilot and Google Gemini are merely tools that will make employers’ and managers’ lives easier — and not in a good way.

He called Copilot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot that has been integrated into the company’s suite of productivity software such as Teams, Outlook, and Office, “dangerous” because it “automates middle management in the worst possible way.”

The Journal doesn’t elaborate on Mollick’s point, but Microsoft advertises Copilot as a way for managers to communicate with employees by generating work updates and summarizing key points of meetings.

Google Gemini, which can analyze videos, could provide employers with the ability to surveil white-collar workers in a similar way that Amazon tracks its employees, he told the Journal.

Microsoft and Google did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular working hours.

Indeed, Microsoft and Google have said that their respective AI models will change the workspace.

In a blog post, Microsoft wrote that Copilot turns “everyone into a manager,” helping workers write emails with an appropriate tone or analyze datasets.

In a February blog, a Google Cloud partner also wrote that Gemini for Google Workspace is a “groundbreaking tool” that could help with email drafting, project planning, and data management.

The two companies’ investments in AI and integration of the model into their existing productivity tools appear to have paid off for now. In their most recent quarterly earnings filings, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported making $21.9 billion and $23.7 billion in profits, respectively.

The companies’ leaders both say AI is giving them a performance boost.

“Microsoft Copilot and Copilot stack are orchestrating a new era of AI transformation, driving better business outcomes across every role and industry,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a press release.

Mollick may be cynical about AI as a productivity tool, but the professor largely has a positive outlook on AI as a whole and views himself as a “rational optimist,” according to the Journal.

“There is not a single large-scale general purpose technology that does not have upsides and downsides, and part of my message has been that we have agency right now, to call certain things out as being bad,” he told the Journal. “And we need to be doing that.”

Mollick did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular working hours.