For a while now, the shiny promise around AI was comforting. There have been promises of how it will not replace you, but instead, empower you. Sounds great, right… but perhaps we need to rethink this. A new Harvard Business Review study suggests something sneakier is happening. Researchers followed a 200-person tech company that fully embraced AI. No one forced higher quotas or bosses demanding more. People simply realized they could do more, so they did. Tasks multiplied, while lunch breaks shrank, and people worked deeper into the evenings. All the time AI saved got swallowed by new expectations. This is where things turned, and instead of relief, workers felt stretched thinner. More people output, with the same or longer hours, and increasing stress. Other studies echo the pattern, and repeatedly, the human work was distinctly larger, and the measured gains were small, often just a few percent. Tech is supposed to empower us, but this shiny tool meant to lighten the load has potential to deliver disaster. It may simply be causing burnout that is smartly dressed up… as progress.
Because employees could do more, work began bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The employees’ to-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, and then kept going.
Source: The first signs of burnout are coming from the people who embrace AI the most | TechCrunch
