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Does AI Lead to a Healthier Organization?
Beware of this hidden cost within the commitment to AI.
Nicholas Layne
April 27, 2026
Welcome to the Well-being Wire, the bi-weekly newsletter focused on practical strategies and solutions that advance well-being in the workplace.
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What is the hidden cost of developing a well-being experience steeped in AI?
This is a question that has been asked within the public forum, but often it is overshadowed by high spending companies that want technology to take center stage.
AI offers many promising advantages when placed in a healthcare setting. This paper presents a strong use case for using AI cancer screenings, demonstrating clear superiority of AI to detect cancerous cells.
However, in the context of human behavior, things get a bit more murky.
Initial studies have shown positive outcomes from the use of AI chatbot coaches in the areas of physical activity, smoking cessation, and diet. It’s worth noting that many of these studies had limited sample sizes and were not randomized controlled trials. There are also questions about how AI coaching can affect habits in the real world.
While AI provides many of the components needed for behavior change (authority, acting as social proof, liking), there are concerns about how it will affect how people interact with real people.
A 2025 study found that active usage of chatbots has effects on mental well-being, namely “higher emotional dependence and problematic use.” The substitution of AI for a human connection can lead to less real-world socialization.
In the context of an employer well-being program, we now have a real challenge.
On the one hand, AI presents the opportunity to scale, provide hyper-personalized guidance, and possesses many of the components needed to change behavior. On the other hand, it can lead to a population of individualized, disconnected employees.
At Propel, we often speak about the power of culture and its ability to create habits, make well-being more sustainable, and bring people together.
The hidden cost of AI is the loss of the unique power your organization has to influence behavior. It trades continual connection and mutual support of habit formation for timely pings with recommendations that (one hopes) someone puts into practice.
Let’s consider the whole picture and how we want our organizations to look in 3 years before taking a step into hyper-personalized, isolated well-being.
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