"Even if AI is - or eventually becomes - an incredible automation tool, will it make workers' lives easier? That's the big question explored in an ongoing study by researchers from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. And so far, it's not looking good for the rank and file. In a piece for Harvard Business Review, the research team's Aruna Ranganathan and Xinqi Maggie Ye reported that after closely monitoring a tech company with two hundred employees for eight months, they found that AI actually intensified the work they had to do, instead of reducing it."
"This "workload creep," in which the employees took on more tasks than what was sustainable for them to keep doing, can create vicious cycle that leads to fatigue, burnout, and lower quality work. "You had thought that maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI, then you save some time, you can work less," one of the employees told the researchers. "But then really, you don't work less. You just work the same amount or even more.""
A study monitoring a 200-employee tech company for eight months found that AI tools intensified employee workloads instead of reducing them. Voluntary adoption led many workers to experiment enthusiastically, because AI made "doing more" feel possible, accessible, and intrinsically rewarding. Workers began absorbing tasks they would have outsourced or justified hiring for, producing unsustainable workload creep. Once the novelty faded, employees realized they had added more than they could handle. Engineers spent more time correcting AI-generated code and many workers increased multitasking, contributing to fatigue, burnout, and lower-quality output.
Read at Futurism
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