Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2023
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

The Crowdless Future? How Generative AI Is Shaping the Future of Human Crowdsourcing

By: Léonard Boussioux, Jacqueline N. Lane, Miaomiao Zhang, Vladimir Jacimovic and Karim R. Lakhani
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:71
ShareBar

Abstract

The rapid advances in generative AI have the potential to reshape organizational innovation, raising uncertainty about the role of human solvers in this new era of augmented intelligence. We initiated a crowdsourcing challenge focused on sustainable, circular economy business opportunities, comparing the capabilities of GPT-4 and human solvers in generating novel and valuable solutions. The challenge attracted a diverse range of global solvers from various industries. 300 evaluators assessed a randomized selection of 13 out of 234 human and AI solutions, totaling 3,900 evaluator–solution pairs. Our findings reveal that, although AI solutions delivered more environmental and financial value—possibly due to a tendency to align with the central patterns seen in their training—human outputs were rated as more innovative, including extreme outcomes at the right tail of the novelty distribution. Our analysis of the rich solution text using natural language processing techniques reveals considerable overlap in semantic dissimilarity metrics between human and AI responses, but humans still exhibit greater linguistic nuances than AI. This study illuminates the promise of AI in augmenting human crowdsourcing for solving complex organizational problems and sets the groundwork for a possible integrative human-AI approach to innovative problem-solving.

Keywords

Large Language Model; Crowdsourcing; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Invention

Citation

Boussioux, Léonard, Jacqueline N. Lane, Miaomiao Zhang, Vladimir Jacimovic, and Karim R. Lakhani. "The Crowdless Future? How Generative AI Is Shaping the Future of Human Crowdsourcing." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-005, July 2023. (Revised November 2023.)
  • SSRN
  • Read Now

About The Authors

Jacqueline Ng Lane

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

Karim R. Lakhani

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • 2023
    • Faculty Research

    Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

    By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani
    • September 2023
    • Economic Record

    Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League

    By: Patrick Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani
    • 2023
    • Faculty Research

    Teams in the Digital Workplace: Technology's Role for Communication, Collaboration, and Performance

    By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Paul Leonardi, Noshir Contractor and Leslie DeChurch
More from the Authors
  • Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani
  • Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League By: Patrick Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani
  • Teams in the Digital Workplace: Technology's Role for Communication, Collaboration, and Performance By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Paul Leonardi, Noshir Contractor and Leslie DeChurch
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College