Chapter 6: AI-powered Dynamic Hybrid Teaming

Organizations have long relied on teams to accomplish difficult tasks, and the nature of team membership has evolved and grown more complex. Given the current state of work, individuals may find themselves being members of many teams at once, and team membership may be dynamic, changing frequently as the work to be performed evolves. Teams may also be hybrid, with members geographically distributed across many locations, leading to reliance on technology not only for team communication and coordination but also for performing tasks within their teams. This chapter presents a vision for how artificial intelligence (AI) can change the nature of how these dynamic hybrid teams perform work in these types of settings. We argue that a key function of AI in human–agent teams (HATs) is to act as an enabler of teamwork, acting as an artificial transactive memory system (ATMS) to address the challenges these teams face. In an ATMS, we can leverage AI to encode, store, and retrieve information about human and artificial team members, improve the flow of information between members, and help to increase productive collaboration. This chapter describes the types of teams and teamwork that this approach targets, the challenges faced by workers in these team settings, a general set of capabilities for AI systems designed to support these teams, and a specific approach that leverages AI to provide that support. Examples from different work domains ground these approaches. Finally, we identify risks and future work required to realize the vision.