The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now is not that AI is going to take your job. That’s because AI will save you from it.
This is the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of people nervous and eager to buy. Yes, some white-collar jobs will disappear. But for most other roles, AI is a force multiplier. You become a more competent and indispensable lawyer, consultant, writer, coder, financial analyst, etc. The tools work for you, you work less hard, everyone wins.
But one new study published in Harvard Business Review follows this premise to its actual conclusion, and what he discovers is not a revolution in productivity. It reveals that companies risk becoming burnout machines.
In what they describe as “ongoing research,” UC Berkeley researchers spent eight months at a 200-person tech company observing what happened when workers truly adopted AI. What they discovered during more than 40 “in-depth” interviews was that no one was pressured at this company. No one was asked to hit new targets. People simply started doing more because the tools seemed more feasible. But because they could do these things, the work began to extend into lunch breaks and late nights. Employees’ to-do lists expanded to fill every hour the AI freed up, and then moved on.
As one engineer told them: “You thought maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI, then you would save time, you could work less. But in reality, you’re not working less. You’re just working the same amount, or even more.”
On the tech industry forum Hacker News, a commenter had the same reactionwriting: “I feel this way. Since my team adopted an AI-driven work style, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled, and actual productivity has only increased by maybe 10%. I feel like leaders are putting immense pressure on everyone to prove that their investment in AI is worth it and we all feel the pressure of trying to show them that it is while having to work longer hours to do it.”
It’s fascinating and also alarming. The debate about AI and work has always centered on the same question: are the gains real? But too few stopped to wonder what would happen when they did.
The researchers’ new findings are not entirely new. A separate trial last summer found that experienced developers using AI tools took 19% longer on tasks while believing them to be 20% faster. Around the same time, a National Bureau of Economic Research study tracking the adoption of AI in thousands of workplaces found that productivity gains amounted to only 3% time savingwithout significant impact on earnings or hours worked in any occupation. The two studies were separated.
This one is perhaps harder to dismiss because it doesn’t challenge the premise that AI can augment what employees can do for themselves. It confirms this, then shows where all this increase is really leading, namely “fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that it’s harder to step away from work, especially as organizational expectations for speed and responsiveness increase,” according to the researchers.
The industry gambled that helping people achieve more would be the answer to everything, but that could turn out to be the start of a whole other problem. The research is worth reading, here.
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