The first signs of fatigue are coming from the people who embrace AI the most

The hottest topic in American society right now isn’t AI taking over your job. Let AI save you from that.

That’s the brand that companies have been working on for the past three years selling to millions of nervous people who are desperate to buy. Yes, some white jobs will end. But for many other roles, the argument goes, AI is overpowering. You become an experienced, important lawyer, consultant, author, book writer, financial expert – and so on. The tools work for you, you work hard, everyone wins.

But a a new lesson published in the Harvard Business Review follows the same to its conclusion, and which finds no change in productivity. They find that companies are in danger of becoming boring machines.

As part of what they describe as “continuous research,” the researchers spent eight months inside a 200-person tech company observing what happened when employees embraced AI. What he found from more than 40 “in-depth” interviews was that no one was forced into the company. No one was told to achieve new goals. People just started doing more because tools made it easier to do. But because he was able to do this, work began to bleed until the afternoon and evening breaks. The worker’s to-do list was expanded to fill every hour the AI ​​freed up, and then continued.

As one engineer told them, “You were thinking that maybe, oh, because you can be more productive with AI, then you save time, you can do less work.”

At Hacker News’ tech industry forum, one commenter had the samewrite, “I feel this. Since my team has jumped into AI for every task, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled and actual productivity has only gone up maybe 10%. It feels like management is putting a lot of pressure on everyone to prove that their investment in AI is worth it and we all feel pressured to try to show them that’s when we have to work more hours to do that.”

It’s fun and scary. The debate about AI and jobs has always revolved around the same question – are the benefits real? But few stop to ask what happens when they are.

HBR’s research is not entirely new. A separate test last summer found developers familiar with the use of AI tools took over 19% longer on the job while he believes he was 20% faster. Around the same time, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that tracked the adoption of AI in thousands of workplaces found that productivity increased. Only 3% in time savingsnot much affected by the salary or working hours of each job. Both studies were randomized.

This can be difficult to disentangle because it does not negate the fact that AI can augment what employees can do for themselves. It confirms, then shows where all the increase leads, which is “fatigue, depression, and the growth of emotions that work is difficult to get rid of, especially when the expectations of the organization to speed up and respond,” according to the researchers.

Companies are betting that helping people do more can be the answer to everything. It could be the beginning of another problem entirely.