"Oops! ChatGPT is Temporarily Unavailable!": A Diary Study on Knowledge Workers' Experiences of LLM Withdrawal

TL;DR

This study explores how knowledge workers experience and adapt to temporary LLM withdrawal, revealing its impact on workflows, professional values, and normative practices in AI-embedded work environments.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into LLMs as infrastructural tools and introduces value-driven appropriation to support professional values amid pervasive LLM use.

Findings

LLM withdrawal disrupted workflows and revealed task gaps.

Participants reclaimed professional values through self-directed work.

LLM use has become an inescapable normative aspect of work.

Abstract

LLMs have become deeply embedded in knowledge work, raising concerns about growing dependency and the potential undermining of human skills. To investigate the pervasiveness of LLMs in work practices, we conducted a four-day diary study with frequent LLM users (N=10), observing how knowledge workers responded to a temporary withdrawal of LLMs. Our findings show how LLM withdrawal disrupted participants' workflows by identifying gaps in task execution, how self-directed work led participants to reclaim professional values, and how everyday practices revealed the extent to which LLM use had become inescapably normative. Conceptualizing LLMs as infrastructural to contemporary knowledge work, this research contributes empirical insights into the often invisible role of LLMs and proposes value-driven appropriation as an approach to supporting professional values in the current LLM-pervasive work environment.