Human-AI Symbiosis in the Workplace: Cognitive, Affective, and Relational Dynamics of Intelligent Collaboration

While artificial intelligence is reshaping the workplace at an unprecedented pace, the psychological experience of working alongside AI remains poorly understood. AI now serves as a decision-support tool, collaborator, communication partner, and algorithmic management system across a wide range of organizational contexts. Existing studies have paid considerable attention to AI adoption, productivity improvement, and ethical risks, but less attention has been paid to the psychological dynamics through which employees experience, interpret, and adapt to intelligent collaboration in their everyday work. Human-AI collaboration is not merely a technological arrangement; it also involves cognitive sensemaking, emotional responses, trust calibration, autonomy negotiation, identity reconstruction, and relational adjustments within teams and organizations. Understanding these processes helps explain under what conditions AI can enhance human capabilities, and under what conditions it may generate stress, resistance, or new forms of workplace inequality. This Research Topic therefore seeks to integrate organizational psychology, human-computer interaction, and management research to examine human-AI symbiosis in the contemporary workplace.This Research Topic aims to advance theoretical and empirical research on how humans and AI systems can work together in psychologically sustainable and organizationally effective ways. We are interested in how employees perceive, interpret, trust, resist, or rely on AI systems; how intelligent collaboration affects emotions, motivation, well-being, learning, creativity, and work relationships; and how leadership, organizational design, human resource management practices, and ethical governance shape these outcomes. Rather than adopting a simple technology-adoption perspective, we conceptualize human-AI symbiosis as a dynamic, adaptive process shaped by cognitive, affective, and relational forces at multiple levels of analysis. We especially welcome studies that uncover mechanisms, boundary conditions, and actionable intervention pathways, with the goal of promoting responsible, inclusive, and high-quality human-AI collaboration design that benefits both individuals and organizations.This Research Topic welcomes submissions focusing on the cognitive, affective, and relational dynamics of workplace human-AI collaboration. Potential themes include:- Cognitive processes in joint decision-making between employees and AI systems, including sensemaking, mental models, and reliance calibration- Trust, perceived autonomy, and control in human-AI interaction- Emotional reactions, technostress, burnout, and employee well-being in AI-enabled work environments- Work identity, agency, meaningfulness, and psychological safety under intelligent collaboration- Communication and coordination in teams working alongside AI agents- Leadership, human resource management, and organizational design in AI-enabled work contexts, including issues of algorithmic management, fairness, and transparency- The development of intelligent collaboration competencies and adaptive learning in human-AI partnerships- Cross-cultural and multilevel perspectives on human-AI symbiosisWe welcome Original Research, Brief Research Reports, Reviews and Systematic Reviews, Conceptual Analyses, Perspectives, and Hypothesis and Theory articles. Empirical submissions may employ quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, experimental, longitudinal, experience sampling, diary, or multilevel approaches. We encourage work that bridges theory and practice and that speaks to the design of workplaces where humans and AI can collaborate effectively, equitably, and with enduring psychological benefit. Topic editors: Xufan Zhang, Lulu Zhou, Yixuan Zhao, Feng Tian Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83149/human-ai-symbiosis-in-the-workplace-cognitive-affective-and-relational-dynamics-of-intelligent-collaboration