Controlling the "Uncontrollable": Tensions, Agency and Control in AI-Augmentation
type: CreativeWork
description: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is present in many aspects of our lives. Organisations often adopt AI to increase speed or productivity, or to reduce costs. However, many still struggle to achieve the desired outcomes as the introduction of AI impacts not only the business processes, but more importantly, the individuals and their tasks. This is due to AI’s unique nature as a technology: it can be perceived as another agent that processes data independently, learns, makes inferences, acts, and changes its behaviour based on cues from the environment. Furthermore, AI shows an inherent lack of transparency on how it functions, making it difficult to monitor, fully anticipate, understand, and control its behaviour and outputs. The “black-box” and agentic nature of AI can challenge our feeling of agency and feeling of control, which we try to protect as they are inherent to how we perceive ourselves (i.e., our identities). This can create tensions for humans, particularly when working closely with AI, as in AI-Augmentation. As AI is here to stay, it is important that we understand these topics in-depth to support a successful human-AI collaboration in the future. Therefore, this thesis investigates the tensions humans face when interacting with AI and how humans navigate the challenges to their feeling of agency and feeling of control when sharing tasks with AI in AI-Augmentation. First, this thesis conceptualises potential underlying reasons for the tensions we face when interacting with AI: our inability to establish a “Theory of Mind” of AI and our lack of control mechanisms for AI. Second, the thesis investigates how humans deal with the tensions in practice when sharing tasks with AI in augmentation. This is achieved via one qualitative case study on Knowledge work & Analytical AI and one on Creatives & Generative AI. This thesis contributes to our understanding on the underlying issues we face when working with AI and provides insights into AI-Augmentation in practic…
abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is present in many aspects of our lives. Organisations often adopt AI to increase speed or productivity, or to reduce costs. However, many still struggle to achieve the desired outcomes as the introduction of AI impacts not only the business processes, but more importantly, the individuals and their tasks. This is due to AI’s unique nature as a technology: it can be perceived as another agent that processes data independently, learns, makes inferences, acts, and changes its behaviour based on cues from the environment. Furthermore, AI shows an inherent lack of transparency on how it functions, making it difficult to monitor, fully anticipate, understand, and control its behaviour and outputs. The “black-box” and agentic nature of AI can challenge our feeling of agency and feeling of control, which we try to protect as they are inherent to how we perceive ourselves (i.e., our identities). This can create tensions for humans, particularly when working closely with AI, as in AI-Augmentation. As AI is here to stay, it is important that we understand these topics in-depth to support a successful human-AI collaboration in the future. Therefore, this thesis investigates the tensions humans face when interacting with AI and how humans navigate the challenges to their feeling of agency and feeling of control when sharing tasks with AI in AI-Augmentation. First, this thesis conceptualises potential underlying reasons for the tensions we face when interacting with AI: our inability to establish a “Theory of Mind” of AI and our lack of control mechanisms for AI. Second, the thesis investigates how humans deal with the tensions in practice when sharing tasks with AI in augmentation. This is achieved via one qualitative case study on Knowledge work & Analytical AI and one on Creatives & Generative AI. This thesis contributes to our understanding on the underlying issues we face when working with AI and provides insights into AI-Augmentation in practic…
author: Leeb, Constanze
language: eng
keywords: Agency, AI-Augmentation, Artificial Intelligence, Control, Identity
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/14176d0d-8018-41a4-a8b5-53ee7a1db33a/download
license: http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved
date published: 2025-09-15
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:30Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.125974