Essentially the most seductive narrative in American work tradition proper now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will prevent from it.
That’s the model the trade has spent the final three years promoting to thousands and thousands of nervous people who find themselves keen to purchase it. Sure, some white-collar jobs will disappear. However for many different roles, the argument goes, AI is a power multiplier. You turn into a extra succesful, extra indispensable lawyer, advisor, author, coder, monetary analyst — and so forth. The instruments give you the results you want, you’re employed much less arduous, all people wins.
However a new study revealed in Harvard Enterprise Evaluation follows that premise to its precise conclusion, and what it finds there isn’t a productiveness revolution. It finds corporations are prone to turning into burnout machines.
As a part of what they describe as “in-progress analysis,” UC Berkeley researchers spent eight months inside a 200-person tech firm watching what occurred when staff genuinely embraced AI. What they discovered throughout greater than 40 “in-depth” interviews was that no person was pressured at this firm. No one was informed to hit new targets. Individuals simply began doing extra as a result of the instruments made extra really feel doable. However as a result of they may do these items, work started bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The staff’ to-do lists expanded to fill each hour that AI freed up, after which stored going.
As one engineer informed them, “You had thought that possibly, oh, since you could possibly be extra productive with AI, then you definitely save a while, you’ll be able to work much less. However then actually, you don’t work much less. You simply work the identical quantity or much more.”
Over on the tech trade discussion board Hacker Information, one commenter had the same reaction, writing, “I really feel this. Since my group has jumped into an AI every little thing working fashion, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled and precise productiveness has solely gone up by possibly 10%. It looks like management is placing immense stress on everybody to show their funding in AI is value it and all of us really feel the stress to attempt to present them it’s whereas really having to work longer hours to take action.”
It’s fascinating and in addition alarming. The argument about AI and work has at all times stalled on the identical query — are the positive aspects actual? However too few have stopped to ask what occurs when they’re.
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June 23, 2026
The researchers’ new findings aren’t fully novel. A separate trial final summer time discovered skilled builders utilizing AI instruments took 19% longer on tasks whereas believing they have been 20% quicker. Across the similar time, a Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis examine monitoring AI adoption throughout 1000’s of workplaces discovered that productiveness positive aspects amounted to just 3% in time savings, with no important impression on earnings or hours labored in any occupation. Each research have gotten picked aside.
This one could also be tougher to dismiss as a result of it doesn’t problem the premise that AI can increase what staff can do on their very own. It confirms it, then reveals the place all that augmentation really leads, which is “fatigue, burnout, and a rising sense that work is tougher to step away from, particularly as organizational expectations for velocity and responsiveness rise,” in keeping with the researchers.
The trade guess that serving to folks do extra could be the reply to every little thing, however it might develop into the start of a distinct downside fully. The analysis is value studying, here.
