Daily Good Company · October 27, 2026
A useful AI collaboration has room for both suggestions and judgment. One workplace experiment gives us a concrete example of how that can look.
What happened
In a study published in Organization Science on June 12, 2026, 791 Procter & Gamble professionals tackled real product-development challenges. Researchers randomly assigned them to work alone or in pairs, with or without generative AI.
Individuals using AI produced proposals comparable in quality to those of two-person teams without it. AI-assisted proposals also drew more evenly on technical and commercial perspectives. Human experts scored the work without knowing which experimental group produced it.
The researchers found that AI's main contribution was improving the ideas available to choose from. Human judgment still mattered in selecting promising ones.
This was a one-day experiment at one company, focused on early-stage proposals. It does not establish that AI can replace an ongoing team or that a better-rated proposal becomes a successful product. Read the published study.
A small way to try the idea
Our takeaway: give yourself more options, then make the choice deliberately.
Pick a low-stakes task, such as naming a neighborhood plant swap. Write down what matters before asking for suggestions: a friendly tone, clear meaning, and a name that fits on a small sign.
Try this:
“Suggest five names for a neighborhood plant swap. Keep them friendly, clear, and short enough for a small sign. For each, explain one strength and one possible drawback. Do not choose a winner.”
Then do your part. Read the names aloud. Reject anything confusing. Ask someone who might attend what they think. Keep your own idea in the running, too.
This is an illustration, not a tested result from the study. You may decide that your first handwritten name was already the best one.
Yesterday's checklist asked whether AI could organize the steps you already knew. Today's question is a little different: did it offer something worth considering, and can you explain why you chose it?
That gives you something concrete to judge beyond how polished the answer sounds.
