By Melissa Stephenson
As artificial intelligence (AI) began to gain traction in the working world, two schools of thought emerged about what it would mean for workers. On one end of the spectrum, AI optimists promised a land of leisure where hours saved would result in more free time disconnected from work. Their doomsday counterparts warned of a world of lost jobs and old-fashioned skills pushing employees to pivot.
Now that AI is doing more of the work people used to do themselves, we’re starting to see that the reality is somewhere in between. According to a recent survey from Solitaired, AI is indeed taking work off everyone’s plates, but rather than costing workers their jobs or giving them more time for themselves, many are using that time to work more.
To be sure, “working more” doesn’t mean that people are working longer hours. Instead, AI is making it possible to cram more work into a typical workday. And as AI ticks off certain tasks in the day, employees are still finding plenty of new work to fill the space. For some, expanding the job may also be part of staying relevant and valuable as AI changes what they’re needed for.
For 40% of Solitaired’s respondents, more work means they get to perform deeper, more creative or strategic work, and more than a fifth are taking more meetings and responding to more messages with this extra time. There could be some self-preservation mixed in with that productivity. With 38% fearing that AI could take over their job, nearly a fifth (19%) of workers are making themselves more visible to leadership and taking on extra projects.
• Also read: I surveyed workers to see if AI had caused job losses and was surprised by the findings
Whether they heeded the warning about AI replacing workers or recognized how their jobs were changing, employees have a reason to highlight their worth beyond the tasks that AI can now handle. Taking on new responsibilities and contributing at higher levels reflects that AI may save them time but doesn’t diminish their value.
This can be a good thing for those who want to spend more time in the interesting parts of their job. But it also creates a new benchmark for how much they can reasonably handle in a typical workday. After workers demonstrate they have that extra capacity day in and day out, it’s hard to rein it back in.
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the workers Solitaired surveyed said they now spend time fact-checking AI output, while 61% review or edit its work. Another 45% spend time writing and rewriting prompts. These are completely new tasks that didn’t exist before AI. Instead of writing something from scratch for an hour or more, some of those minutes are used to check or edit or both what AI has written. So those same minutes are just redistributed to tasks that check and adjust AI output. In fact, 29% told Solitaired that their job now feels more like managing AI than doing the work themselves.
Interestingly, that underscores how neither version of an AI workplace accurately predicted the reality, with the truth somewhere in the middle. Employees weren’t replaced by AI, and the work hasn’t completely disappeared into an automated abyss. Instead, employees are seeing their roles shifted from producing work themselves to checking the technology that now produces a large share of it.
And their jobs continue to change as the technology does. Over half (51%) report to Solitaired that they learn new AI tools, which just adds another task to a workday that was supposed to get shorter.
None of this erases the time that AI is saving employees, but it does highlight how every hour automated doesn’t translate into an hour saved and returned to the worker. Some of that time becomes the cost of using AI effectively.
The trouble is that productivity gains have a way of becoming the new baseline. For example, if a worker previously completed five projects in a day but can complete seven with the help of AI, those two extra projects start to look less like extra and more like expected as the weeks wear on.
That puts employees in an awkward position when deciding how transparent to be about the time AI saves them. If finishing extra projects just means new ones land on the desk, there’s little incentive to advertise new efficiencies. In fact, 2 in 5 workers told Solitaired that they hide their time savings from their employers.
There’s a financial disconnect as well. Despite producing more, 65% say they’re not making more money as a result. For many workers, that means the benefits of greater productivity aren’t necessarily showing up in their paychecks or in more free time. Instead, they’re showing up in the amount of work that can fit into a day.
The shift for employees is real. They’re still competing with technology in the workplace, but rather than competing for their jobs, they’re competing to reclaim that time savings they were promised. AI has delivered on saving time, but saving time and giving it back to workers are two different things. Employees have gotten very good at using AI to create more hours in the workday. The problem is, they keep filling them back up.
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
Read next:
• Offloading work tasks to AI comes with a cost – to our brains
• Workers Shift Tasks to AI, Report More Time Savings, and Use 66% of AI Outputs With Minimal Revisions
As artificial intelligence (AI) began to gain traction in the working world, two schools of thought emerged about what it would mean for workers. On one end of the spectrum, AI optimists promised a land of leisure where hours saved would result in more free time disconnected from work. Their doomsday counterparts warned of a world of lost jobs and old-fashioned skills pushing employees to pivot.
Now that AI is doing more of the work people used to do themselves, we’re starting to see that the reality is somewhere in between. According to a recent survey from Solitaired, AI is indeed taking work off everyone’s plates, but rather than costing workers their jobs or giving them more time for themselves, many are using that time to work more.
To be sure, “working more” doesn’t mean that people are working longer hours. Instead, AI is making it possible to cram more work into a typical workday. And as AI ticks off certain tasks in the day, employees are still finding plenty of new work to fill the space. For some, expanding the job may also be part of staying relevant and valuable as AI changes what they’re needed for.
AI Is Expanding Our Jobs
According to Solitaired’s findings, 96% of workers are saving time with AI, and nearly half of them use that savings by taking on more work, but that doesn’t mean that they’re simply adding more of the same tasks to their day. Some workers see the opportunity, or perhaps some incentive, to expand what they can contribute.For 40% of Solitaired’s respondents, more work means they get to perform deeper, more creative or strategic work, and more than a fifth are taking more meetings and responding to more messages with this extra time. There could be some self-preservation mixed in with that productivity. With 38% fearing that AI could take over their job, nearly a fifth (19%) of workers are making themselves more visible to leadership and taking on extra projects.
• Also read: I surveyed workers to see if AI had caused job losses and was surprised by the findings
Whether they heeded the warning about AI replacing workers or recognized how their jobs were changing, employees have a reason to highlight their worth beyond the tasks that AI can now handle. Taking on new responsibilities and contributing at higher levels reflects that AI may save them time but doesn’t diminish their value.
This can be a good thing for those who want to spend more time in the interesting parts of their job. But it also creates a new benchmark for how much they can reasonably handle in a typical workday. After workers demonstrate they have that extra capacity day in and day out, it’s hard to rein it back in.
AI Is Creating New Work, Too
While some promised that using AI would mean handing off a task for automation while workers dig into more interesting tasks, that’s not exactly the reality in today’s workplace. AI may handle some tasks, but it also creates others. After all, AI assistance means using AI with an emphasis on “assistance” because someone has to check to ensure that AI’s work is accurate and usable.Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the workers Solitaired surveyed said they now spend time fact-checking AI output, while 61% review or edit its work. Another 45% spend time writing and rewriting prompts. These are completely new tasks that didn’t exist before AI. Instead of writing something from scratch for an hour or more, some of those minutes are used to check or edit or both what AI has written. So those same minutes are just redistributed to tasks that check and adjust AI output. In fact, 29% told Solitaired that their job now feels more like managing AI than doing the work themselves.
Interestingly, that underscores how neither version of an AI workplace accurately predicted the reality, with the truth somewhere in the middle. Employees weren’t replaced by AI, and the work hasn’t completely disappeared into an automated abyss. Instead, employees are seeing their roles shifted from producing work themselves to checking the technology that now produces a large share of it.
And their jobs continue to change as the technology does. Over half (51%) report to Solitaired that they learn new AI tools, which just adds another task to a workday that was supposed to get shorter.
None of this erases the time that AI is saving employees, but it does highlight how every hour automated doesn’t translate into an hour saved and returned to the worker. Some of that time becomes the cost of using AI effectively.
Today’s Productivity Becomes Tomorrow’s Baseline
As the intensity of their output has increased, workers have felt it in the tempo of the day. Sixty percent note that the workday feels faster with the arrival of AI, and 2 in 5 say they face greater output expectations.The trouble is that productivity gains have a way of becoming the new baseline. For example, if a worker previously completed five projects in a day but can complete seven with the help of AI, those two extra projects start to look less like extra and more like expected as the weeks wear on.
That puts employees in an awkward position when deciding how transparent to be about the time AI saves them. If finishing extra projects just means new ones land on the desk, there’s little incentive to advertise new efficiencies. In fact, 2 in 5 workers told Solitaired that they hide their time savings from their employers.
There’s a financial disconnect as well. Despite producing more, 65% say they’re not making more money as a result. For many workers, that means the benefits of greater productivity aren’t necessarily showing up in their paychecks or in more free time. Instead, they’re showing up in the amount of work that can fit into a day.
The shift for employees is real. They’re still competing with technology in the workplace, but rather than competing for their jobs, they’re competing to reclaim that time savings they were promised. AI has delivered on saving time, but saving time and giving it back to workers are two different things. Employees have gotten very good at using AI to create more hours in the workday. The problem is, they keep filling them back up.
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
Read next:
• Offloading work tasks to AI comes with a cost – to our brains
• Workers Shift Tasks to AI, Report More Time Savings, and Use 66% of AI Outputs With Minimal Revisions
