AI has always been promoted as a tool that can reduce the daily work pressure of the users. Many technology leaders have also, from time to time, predicted that these smart AI tools will free workers from routine tasks and give them more time for creativity and strategic thinking. However, the new research suggests that the opposite may be happening, as instead of reducing the workload, AI is pushing many employees to work faster and handle more tasks in a day. The findings come from a large analysis of workplace digital activity that tracked how employees used their time before and after adopting AI tools. The results show a clear pattern. While AI helps people work more efficiently, it also encourages them to take on additional work rather than slow down.
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ActivTrak, a cloud-based workforce analytics and productivity management software company, examined the digital work patterns for about 164,000 employees across 1,111 organisations. Researchers compared workers’ activity for 180 days before and after they started using AI tools. They found that work activity increased across nearly every category. The company clocked 443 million hours of recorded work activity.
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The results of the findings show that the time spent on email, messaging and chat applications more than doubled after workers began using AI. The use of business management tools such as human resources and accounting software rose by 94 per cent. At the same time, time spent on focused and uninterrupted work declined. According to the study, the amount of time AI users devoted to deep concentration dropped by 9 per cent, while non-users showed almost no change.
“It’s not that AI doesn’t create efficiency,” said Gabriela Mauch, ActivTrak’s chief customer officer and head of its productivity lab. “It’s that the capacity it frees up immediately gets repurposed into doing other work, and that’s where the creep is likely to happen.”
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Other research points in a similar direction. An ongoing eight-month study of about 200 employees at a technology company found that generative AI tools did not reduce workloads. Instead, employees worked faster, handled a wider range of tasks and often ended up working longer hours.
People may take on more tasks because AI makes them feel easier to start, said Aruna Ranganathan, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “AI makes additional tasks feel easy and accessible, creating a sense of momentum,” she said.
ActivTrak also found that AI use at work is rising quickly. About 80 per cent of employees now use AI tools on the job, compared with 53 per cent two years ago. However, most workers still spend only a small portion of their time using them.
