Lighten Our Load? AI Is Doing the Opposite

Workers hoping that AI will clear their plates may instead be getting a second helping. A large new analysis of on-the-job computer activity suggests artificial intelligence is intensifying work, not dialing it down. Productivity-tracking firm ActivTrak studied 443 million hours of activity from 164,000 workers at 1,111 employers and found that after people started using AI tools, their time spent on email, messaging, and chat more than doubled; use of business software jumped 94%. Time for deep, uninterrupted work slipped 9% for AI users, while barely budging for everyone else.

"It's not that AI doesn't create efficiency," ActivTrak's Gabriela Mauch tells the Wall Street Journal. But the freed-up capacity "immediately gets repurposed into doing other work." The paper reports that research being conducted by UC Berkeley's Aruna Ranganathan at a 200-person tech firm is coming to a similar conclusion: Employees are moving faster, taking on more responsibilities, and logging more hours. A Harvard Business Review article on Ranganathan's research adds this: "Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use ... On their own initiative workers did more because AI made 'doing more' feel possible."