Less Experienced Employees With AI Match Veteran Performance
"Generative AI can effectively substitute for the expertise and guidance typically provided by more experienced team members," explains Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, lead researcher from Harvard Business School, describing a dramatic leveling effect discovered in a major corporate experiment. "Employees less familiar with product development tasks could achieve performance levels comparable to teams with experienced members when given access to AI tools."
This finding reveals how AI may fundamentally democratize expertise within organizations, writes End of Miles, pointing to a future where technical skills and domain knowledge become more accessible across all experience levels.
The AI-powered performance gap closer
The groundbreaking finding emerged from a field experiment involving 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble, where participants tackled real product innovation challenges in different configurations: working individually or in teams, with or without AI assistance.
The researchers discovered something remarkable in their data: when employees for whom product development was not a core job responsibility worked alone without AI, they performed relatively poorly compared to veterans. But when these same employees gained access to AI tools, the performance difference virtually disappeared.
"Without AI, non-core-job employees working alone performed relatively poorly. Even when working in teams, non-core-job employees without AI showed only modest improvements in performance. However, when given access to AI, non-core-job employees working alone achieved performance levels comparable to teams with at least one core-job employee." Research findings
The Harvard-led research team characterized this as AI enabling "non-core" employees to achieve results comparable to those produced by teams that included at least one experienced product developer. This pattern extends prior research on AI's impact on individual knowledge workers to a team context, showing AI's potential to dramatically level the playing field across experience levels.
Why this matters in the workplace
For organizations, this finding carries significant implications. The P&G researcher noted that AI allows newer employees or those from different functional backgrounds to produce higher-quality work more quickly than previously possible without requiring direct collaboration or supervision from more experienced colleagues.
This capability could fundamentally transform organizational structures, potentially flattening hierarchies and reducing dependencies on specialized expertise for certain types of tasks. For employees, AI provides an on-demand coach and knowledge repository that can supplement their existing skills and help them perform beyond their experience level.
"It suggests that AI can effectively substitute for the expertise and guidance typically provided by team members that are familiar with the task at hand."
Beyond performance metrics
The Stanford economist and study co-author emphasized that this democratization of expertise went beyond mere performance metrics. The study found that AI not only improved solution quality but also helped less experienced employees produce more comprehensive solutions that integrated both technical and commercial perspectives – something traditionally requiring cross-functional collaboration.
Unlike previous technological innovations that primarily widened the gap between experienced and novice workers, generative AI appears to be narrowing it. This finding has implications for employee training, advancement opportunities, and how organizations might structure teams in the future.
The research also revealed that participants using AI reported significantly more positive emotional experiences during their work, suggesting that the technology might enhance not just performance but job satisfaction for less experienced employees who might otherwise feel limited by their expertise gaps.
As organizations continue adopting AI technologies, understanding how they can specifically benefit less experienced employees could lead to more inclusive strategies that leverage both human and artificial intelligence to maximize organization-wide capabilities, rather than concentrating advanced capabilities among those already at the top of the expertise hierarchy.
