The most fascinating story in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. That means AI will save you from that.
It’s the version the industry has spent the past three years selling to millions of nervous people who want to buy it. Yes, some white-collar jobs will disappear. But for most other roles, the argument is that AI is a force multiplier. You become a more capable and indispensable lawyer, consultant, writer, programmer, financial analyst, etc. Tools help, reduce effort, and everyone benefits.
But a new study published in the Harvard Business Review actually follows that premise to its conclusion, finding that no productivity revolution has occurred. It turns out that companies are at risk of burnout.
As part of what they call an “ongoing study,” researchers at the University of California, Berkeley spent eight months inside a 200-person technology company to see what happens when employees fully embrace AI. What they discovered in more than 40 “thorough” interviews was that no one felt pressured at the company. No one was asked to achieve new goals. Thanks to tools, people started doing more. I felt like I could do more with the tools. However, since I have been able to do these things, my work has started to take me into my lunch break and late into the night. Employee to-do lists grew until they were filled with every hour freed up by AI, and so on.
One engineer told them: “You might have thought that AI would make you more productive, so you could save time and do less work. But the truth is, you don’t have less work to do. You just do the same amount, or more.”
On the tech industry forum Hacker News, one commenter had a similar reaction, writing, “I feel the same way. Since my team has all moved to AI working, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled, and actual productivity has probably only increased by 10%.” I feel like the leadership is putting immense pressure on everyone to prove that their investment is worth it. We all feel the pressure to prove that we’re worth it, even though we actually have to work long hours.”
That’s both fascinating and worrying. The debate about AI and jobs always boils down to the same question: Are the benefits real? But too few people stop and ask what happens then.
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The researchers’ new findings are not entirely new. Another study last summer found that while experienced developers using AI tools believed they were 20% faster at their tasks, they were taking 19% longer at their tasks. Around the same time, a National Bureau of Economic Research study that tracked the implementation of AI in thousands of workplaces found that productivity gains amounted to only 3% time savings and had no significant impact on income or hours worked in any occupation. Both studies are fragmented.
This may be difficult to dismiss because it does not challenge the premise that AI can augment what employees can do themselves. That confirms that, the researchers say, and shows what the buildup is actually leading to: “fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that it’s becoming harder to disengage from work, especially as organizational expectations for speed and responsiveness increase.”
The industry is betting that the answer to everything is to help people do more. It may turn out to be the beginning of a completely different problem.
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