Eager to replace your colleagues with AI? If so, you’re likely experiencing one of two complicated workplace emotions. According to recent research by BetterUp , people with lower mattering at work are 1.5 times more likely to displace colleagues with AI, and those with lower psychological safety are 2.1 times more likely. As people become more withdrawn at work, collaboration naturally suffers. “Organizations have been so focused on individual AI readiness that we’ve failed to see the forest for the trees,” says Kate Niederhoffer, Chief Scientist and Head of BetterUp Labs.

Niederhoffer says that when studying high-performing teams, three things matter: expertise, trust, and coordination. “When we look at the impact of AI on those three things, we see that expertise is increasing, which should surprise no one. We all have access to these great pools of knowledge, but we haven’t taken into account how we relate to each other — and so much of that is trusting who knows what. That trust isn’t moving in tandem with our ability to have specialized knowledge, so this creates a coordination tax.”

That coordination tax is changing how we interact with our colleagues. The research finds that 83% of workers use AI in place of a colleague for quick information, and 37% are also using it instead of a colleague for a conversation or check-in. “When we look at what’s responsible for this drop in coordination and trust, it’s almost exclusively this behavior of displacement of going to an AI over a human colleague,” says Niederhoffer.

This behavior poses an interesting chicken-and-egg question: are people turning to AI because they already feel disconnected from their colleagues, or is turning to AI the culprit behind deepening disconnection? After all, nearly half of survey respondents report that teammates are coming to them less because of AI, and people who report being displaced are 3.3 times less likely to want to work with that colleague again.

“People who feel a low sense of mattering are more likely to displace others, but also to feel displaced themselves,” explains Niederhoffer. “When people have a sense that their work doesn’t serve an important purpose, or believe their skills aren’t valued by the team, they start to feel that people don’t want to work with them — and then they also avoid working with others.” For those already feeling distant, AI alleviates the friction of human communication. “People perceive less judgment from AI than from a human, for better or worse.”

Rethinking teamwork in the age of AI

“We need to make sure people feel incentivized at the collective level to coordinate,” Niederhoffer advises. Perhaps that incentivization comes back to feeling like our work matters. “People need to see that their work makes a real impact on the organization.”

BetterUp also recommends building a learning culture that develops human skills alongside AI capabilities, setting norms for reinvesting time saved by AI back into people, investing in relationship building, and most crucially — rethinking outdated mental models for what teamwork requires.