Submitted 16 hours ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/11/ai_makes_employees_work_harder/
A Harvard Business Review study is answering the question ‘what will employees do if AI saves them time at work?’ The answer: more work.
I can’t access the paper but a lot of people are drawing wild conclusions from it and misrepresenting what’s there.
In short, what I could find was, they asked 40 employees from a tech startup about their AI use.
They did no comparison study or experiment.
If I had to guess the tech startup probably works in AI as well. Not exactly an unbiased study.
Also startups are notorious for 7-day work weeks because they’re…well…startups.
I’ve literally never used it for work at all, c suits is starting to push it more but there’s no much use. Definitely not working harder
I honestly used AI for something other than summarizing a meeting yesterday. It failed so miserably that I’m really not apt to use it again. Maybe I was wrong to assume it could summarize a simple graph into a table for me.
A co-worker not long ago had AI (fucking copilot in this case) randomly trying to analyze a spreadsheet report with a list of users.
There wasn’t any specific need to do this right now, but, curious, he let it do its thing. The AI correctly identified it was a list of user accounts, and said it might be able to count them. Which would be ridiculously easy to do, since it’s just a correctly formatted spreadsheet with each row being one user.
So he says OK, count them for me. The AI apologizes, it can’t process the file because it’s too big to be passed fully as a parameter in a python script (OK, why and how are you doing that?) but says it might be able to process the list if it’s copy-pasted into a text file.
My co-worker is like, at that point, why fucking not? and does the thing. The AI still fails anyway and apologizes again.
We’re paying for that shit. Not specifically for copilot, but it was part of the package. Laughing at how it fails at simple tasks it set up for itself is slightly entertaining I guess, thanks Microsoft.
You must have done things wrong. These cases actually work extremely well. Like it or not.
AI has a lot of pitfalls. It helps knowing how they work: tokens, context, training, harnesses and tools,… Because then nonsense like this makes a lot more sense. (For context, I later told it to use JavaScript to manipulate strings to accomplish this task and it did a much better job. Still needed touchups of course)
i used it for the first time a few weeks ago, cant trust the results as they dont verify the actual sources where they get numbers/cost from. it was about an ACA plan.
Sadly its true. In my previous company, the CEO asked a web developer to start a project in another framework and when she said she needs at least 1-2 weeks studying the new framework, the CEO responded, “just use ChatGPT and try to do the project in 10 days”.
Ah classic “here’s a tool to make your job easier. But don’t think it will make you work less, it will just give us more money” (if ai even makes it easier)
I don’t know if this is true but I once read that people expected the cotton gin to improve slaves’ conditions because that part of the process was incredibly labor-intensive, so it would be saving them work. Instead it made cotton farming more profitable and boosted slave ownership. ☹️
They’re using AI inefficiently, then. I use it to get a lot done in very short bursts through the day, and spend longer bursts fucking off in between.
How are you reclaiming more of your day? The wage slavers want you on the office 9 to 7 regardless of how much job you “save” in the meantime. Don’t you want the office to look living and used? Think of the shareholders’s investment on the office space!
I’ve fooled them into thinking I’m so studious and productive, that I’m only required to spend 5 hours in office, 4 days a week. A good chunk of that time is spent chatting with people I enjoy chatting with over coffee. I’m also naturally reclusive, so the requirement of getting out of the house has a positive impact on my life, regardless of the setting.
I know you’ve got the most downvoted comment here, but I actually agree with you completely.
Using AI to replace genuine creative work is depressing.
In my experience, the latest AI tools (and agents) are more than capable of cutting corporate corners and generating the kind of bullshit busywork that defines so many “bullshit jobs.”
It feels like the perfect use case for AI given the system so many of us are stuck in. Be smart and use AI to get some of our time back at the expense of your employers.
Lemmy is full of militantly anti-AI folks who would rather die on a hill penniless, than use a flawed technology against their oppressors in their favor. Despite the pending bubble pop, the tech isn’t going anywhere, may as well learn how to leverage and exploit it in the workplace.
“but not me, I’m built different” 😅
This is the way
Burn it all down. Lock the CEOs in before you do.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
And at lower quality with more errors of higher severity. Yay.