The Complementarity Paradox: Human-AI Collaboration, Overreliance, and Skill Decline in Entrepreneurial Contexts

Abstract

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is beginning to reconfigure how entrepreneurial work is organized. Professionals with a strong individual entrepreneurial orientation are often among the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters, yet this same zeal can set in motion a chain of effects that may ultimately undermine essential skills. Drawing on cognitive offloading theory and skill decay literature, we conceptualize GenAI use as collaboration depth and GenAI dependence as collaboration asymmetry. We theorize a sequential mechanism in which individual entrepreneurial orientation prompts deeper collaboration with GenAI, sustained collaboration tends to cultivate GenAI dependence, and dependence in turn is associated with perceived erosion of professional skills. We further argue that a strong long-term orientation can amplify the conversion of collaboration depth into dependence, since future-focused individuals may reframe routine use as a strategic investment and assign less immediate priority to corrective practice. Survey data from 143 knowledge workers across five countries are broadly consistent with this account and point to what we term a hustle-to-handicap pattern: when entrepreneurial ambition meets GenAI under a long-term outlook, perceived skill erosion appears to emerge through sustained behavior rather than through disposition alone. The study contributes to the emerging information systems conversation on human-AI collaboration by illuminating how entrepreneurial and temporal orientations shape the conditions under which GenAI may shift from augmenting capability toward perceived capability erosion.