AI-Based Digital Assistants in the Workplace: An Idiomatic Analysis

Jackson, Stephen and Panteli, Niki (2024) AI-Based Digital Assistants in the Workplace: An Idiomatic Analysis. Communications of the Association for Information Systems. ISSN 1529-3181 (In Press)

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Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based digital assistants are increasingly being adopted by organizations to support tasks. Nevertheless, our understanding of how organizational members perceive digital assistants still needs further investigation. Drawing on figurative language analysis involving in-depth interviews, we explore the idiomatic expressions that organizational participants drew on in their accounts of digital assistants. Our analysis reveals the value of idioms for understanding themes regarding how digital assistants are perceived in a workplace context. These themes depict both the opportunities and challenges, with the former encompassing the ability to focus on value-added activities, productivity, and efficiency gains, as well as reducing job monotony, and the latter including themes such as uncontrollability and unexpectedness, tracking and privacy, transparency, and trust. The study illustrates the usefulness of idiomatic expressions as a fresh lens to understand how people express their thoughts, views, and feelings, as well as uncover issues associated with digital assistants that are not well understood.