- One of AI’s biggest promises was to reduce workload so employees could focus on higher-value tasks, but new research shows the opposite: AI is constantly increasing work intensity.
- In an 8-month study at a US tech company with about 200 employees, generative AI caused workers to work faster, take on a wider scope of tasks, and extend working hours into the evening or early morning, even though they were not asked to.
- AI drives task expansion: product and design staff write code, researchers do technical work, and many take on extra work that would previously have been delegated or required additional headcount.
- A ripple effect emerges as engineers have to spend extra time reviewing, fixing, and guiding “vibe-coding” products or incomplete pull requests created by colleagues with AI.
- The boundary between work and rest is blurred because AI makes starting work too easy, leading employees to squeeze in “a little more work” during lunch breaks, meetings, or before leaving their desks.
- AI also increases multitasking: running multiple agents in parallel, doing manual work while waiting for AI to process, leading to constant attention switching and high cognitive load.
- Initially, productivity increases significantly, but in the long term, it easily leads to workload creep, mental fatigue, burnout, reduced decision-making quality, and higher turnover rates.
📌 Research shows that generative AI causes workers to work faster, take on a wider scope of tasks, and extend working hours into the evening or early morning, even though they were not asked to. The boundary between work and rest is blurred because AI makes starting work too easy, leading employees to squeeze in “a little more work.” AI also increases multitasking: running multiple agents in parallel, doing manual work while waiting for AI to process, leading to constant attention switching and high cognitive load. In the long term, this easily leads to workload creep, mental fatigue, burnout, reduced decision-making quality, and higher turnover rates.
