In Two New Articles and a Book Chapter, Authors Explore AI as Its Role in Organizations Shifts from Tool to Teammate
Organizations are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) in the role of team members. In two new articles and a chapter in a new book, researchers explore the role of AI as it shifts from tool to teammate.
“Despite its promise, integrating AI into teams carries a lot of uncertainty,” says Lindsay Larson, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College, who coauthored the works. “Ineffective collaboration with AI can determine whether a multi-million-dollar investment in AI succeeds or fails. Preparing organizations for the future of teamwork requires robust strategies that address the rapid evolution of AI’s capabilities as well as the innate human tendencies that may help or hinder AI implementation."
Larson coauthored all three works with researchers at Purdue University.
In the first article, published in the journal Human Factors, the authors examine how AI roles (e.g., teammate, support, tool) shape acceptance via workers’ agency and conscious experience. In three studies, they explored the relation between AI roles and individuals’ acceptance of them using technology-centered and human-centered perspectives. They found that shifting AI roles from tools to teammates may enhance acceptance of the technology via individuals’ perceptions, but forcing that label may have hidden costs.
“Using a label like ‘support’ may be a more appropriate way to describe AI’s role in today’s workforce,” suggests Alexandra Harris-Watson, assistant professor of industrial/organizational psychology at Purdue, who coauthored the article. The study was funded by a University of Oklahoma Institute for Community and Society Transformation Seed Grant Award.
In the second article, Larson and Watson propose a framework for both human teams and human-AI teams that specifies the conditions under which synthetic agents meet established criteria of human teams. The article appears in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
The authors propose that mind perception—that is, the extent to which people perceive the mental states of agency and conscious experience—is the critical determinant of when technology “makes the team.” In their model, mind perception functions as an implicit assumption of all teammates and a dynamic factor shaped by characteristics of people and AI tools.
The article identifies concrete designs for effective human-AI teams and addresses potential ethical implications and negative consequences of fostering mind perception in non-human collaborators. The authors emphasize that while perceived mindedness may enhance collaboration, simulating human-like attributes in machines and AI companions can also introduce risks.
“We propose that technology becomes a teammate when perceived as one, a judgment that is strongly shaped by mind perception,” notes Larson. “In demonstrating that teammate status depends not on actual technical capabilities but on perception, we offer an integrative and future-proof conceptualization of teams that applies to all types of human-agent collectives.”
In the third work, a chapter in a new book, Larson and Harris-Watson write in the context of AI’s potential to fundamentally transform organizational team dynamics and performance. They draw on team science to conceptualize AI’s contributions along two dimensions: roles AI may occupy in organizational teams (e.g., tool versus teammate) and team functions (i.e., taskwork versus teamwork). They conclude with a nuanced agenda for advancing teamwork with AI in both research and practice by integrating human- and technology-centered models.
The chapter is part of the book, Artificial Intelligence for I-O Psychologists.
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Summarized from three works:
- An article in Human Factors, "What’s in a Name? Implications of AI Roles and Mind Perception for Human-AI Teams," by Harris-Watson, AM (Purdue University), Byun, C (Purdue University), and Larson, LE (Carnegie Mellon University). Copyright 2026 Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.
- An article in Computers in Human Behavior, "When Tech Makes the Team: Mind Perception as a Unifying Framework for Human and Human-Agent Teams," by Harris-Watson, AM (Purdue University), and Larson, LE (Carnegie Mellon University). Copyright 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
- A chapter from the book, Artificial Intelligence for I-O Psychologists (I Thompson, GP Yankov, & I Hernandez, Eds.), "Preparing for a New Era of Teamwork: Strategies for Teaming with Artificial Intelligence," by Larson, LE (Carnegie Mellon University), and Harris-Watson, AM (Purdue University). Copyright 2026 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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