Workers who know their boss is going to review them are actually *more* likely to just mindlessly copy and paste from an AI.
SSRN · March 17, 2026 · 6325399
The Takeaway
While managers assume oversight encourages scrutiny, the fear of evaluation actually makes workers use AI as a 'shield.' By deferring to the AI's perceived expertise, employees avoid the personal risk of introducing their own errors, effectively outsourcing their accountability to the machine.
From the abstract
Can review-a cornerstone of organizational accountability-encourage workers to collaborate with AI rather than outsource their work entirely to it? Across seven experiments (N = 2,895), we find that review has the opposite effect: participants who expected their work to be evaluated by a peer or supervisor modified AI-generated content significantly less than those who did not anticipate review. In other words, reviewing a worker's final work makes them more likely to copy and paste from AI rath