Complexity & Systems of MeaningGet the book

Part III

Cybernetic teammate

How does teamwork change when AI joins?

The idea, in brief

With CyberMate I shift attention from the individual to the group. I start with the Cybernetic Teammate experiment to ask how AI reshapes expertise, collaboration and the emotional dimension of work. I relate these findings to distributed cognition and actor-network theory.

Here I summarise the chapter’s argument. Below you will find an excerpt from my book and the references I cite there, numbered as in the bibliography.

Companion page reviewed · 17 October 2026

From the book’s companion

An excerpt from my book

Original Italian text, from the chapter opening. · 1 min

Fino a qui abbiamo affrontato la relazione tra l'individuo e l'intelligenza artificiale generativa guardandola, per così dire, dall'interno: prima isolando quel cortocircuito per cui una maggiore competenza tecnica non si traduce in maggiore accuratezza metacognitiva ma anzi tende a comprometterla, poi costruendo un modello a fasi della deriva cognitiva che descrive la traiettoria (non inevitabile, ma nemmeno improbabile) dall'augmentation consapevole alla dipendenza epistemica, passando per quella zona grigia dell'offloading progressivo dove la delega smette di essere strategica senza che il soggetto se ne accorga. La resa cognitiva qualificata, proposta come competenza e non come difetto, rappresenta il tentativo di costruire un argine intenzionale a questa traiettoria, ma opera pur sempre sul piano dell'individuo e del suo rapporto con lo strumento.

My note

The empirical work on the “Jagged Frontier” was, for me, a watershed in understanding the dynamics of work in teams that are not exclusively “human” (like the ones we are already coming to inhabit). And it also gave meaning to the insults that everyone, often, hurls at the automated voice of the various services (the road-toll card first among them).

The chapter’s infographics

Enlarge each plate to inspect it. The overview and extended text above explain the chapter in text; they are not a word-for-word transcription of the images.

Chapter infographic map #

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References I cite in this chapter

I have gathered the references cited in this chapter, preserving the entries and numbering of my book’s bibliography. Links are included only where supplied in the book.

  • [33] Dell'Acqua, Fabrizio, Charles Ayoubi, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Raffaella Sadun, Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, Yi Han, Jeff Goldman, Hari Nair, Stewart Taub e Karim R. Lakhani. The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise. Working Paper 25-043, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, 2025.
  • [8] Autor, David H. "Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation". Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3), 3–30, 2015.
  • [127] Zammuto, Raymond F., Terri L. Griffith, Ann Majchrzak, Deborah J. Dougherty e Samer Faraj. "Information Technology and the Changing Fabric of Organization". Organization Science, 18(5), 749–762, 2007.
  • [87] Mollick, Ethan. Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Portfolio/Penguin, New York, 2024.
  • [118] Suh, Kil-Soo, Hongki Kim e Eung Kyo Suh. "What If Your Avatar Looks Like You? Dual-Congruity Perspectives for Avatar Use". MIS Quarterly, 35(3), 711–729, 2011.
  • [80] Li, Joanna Z., Alina Herderich e Amit Goldenberg. Skill but Not Effort Drive GPT Overperformance over Humans in Cognitive Reframing of Negative Scenarios. Working paper, 2024.
  • [63] Hutchins, Edwin. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995.
  • [75] Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.
A term is unfamiliar? Open the glossary →

Bring it into your work

How does teamwork change when AI joins?

Write down one real example, identify what you would delegate and name who will check the result.

Use the worksheet

Connected ideas

is introduced by

Cognitive drift and surrender

from the individual to the group

introduces

Onto-ethics of collaboration

from the synthetic colleague to the ethical knot

reinforces

From God to Google

algorithmic authority reproduces itself inside every hybrid team

is in tension with

Cognitive drift and surrender

individual cognitive surrender vs collective augmentation

contributes to

A(I)DOPTION

requires the AI Manifesto and the governance of collaboration

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Riccardo Bovetti · Essay · English edition. Purchase and current availability on Amazon.

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