AI spurs employees to work harder, faster, and with fewer breaks, study finds
- Reference: 1770839466
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/11/ai_makes_employees_work_harder/
- Source link:
Researchers Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye with University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business studied a set of 40 workers at a 200-employee tech company from April to December last year to see whether generative AI had changed work habits in engineering, product, design, research, and operations.
"We found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so," the researchers wrote. "Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative, workers did more because AI made 'doing more' feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding."
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Unfortunately the intensity of the work, the longer hours, and task expansion, led employees to feel stretched too thin, as the added work ate into their personal time.
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"That workload creep can in turn lead to cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making,” the researchers satiated. “The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems."
During interviews with the employees, researchers found that using generative AI made it easier for employees to begin tasks that may have otherwise been daunting when starting from a blank page. Additionally, they were more willing to take on new responsibilities that had belonged to other roles thanks to a cognitive boost from AI.
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But there were also engineering employees who found themselves checking the work of novice coders for errors, coaching vibe coders, and finishing projects that others had started.
Because it was easy to start tasks, the workers in the study began to work during breaks, at night and early in the morning, with fewer natural pauses in their workday.
"What looks like higher productivity in the short run can mask silent workload creep and growing cognitive strain as employees juggle multiple AI-enabled workflows," researchers said. "Because the extra effort is voluntary and often framed as enjoyable experimentation, it is easy for leaders to overlook how much additional load workers are carrying."
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The fear is that this could impair judgement, increase the likelihood of errors, and mask unsustainable intensity as productivity gains.
"For workers, the cumulative effect is fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that work is harder to step away from, especially as organizational expectations for speed and responsiveness rise," the paper stated.
Employees have some cause to fear losing their jobs with Forrester’s most recent [7]AI job replacement research estimates that the technology could uproot 6 percent of jobs by 2030, or about [8]10.4 million , through robotic process automation, business process automation, physical robotics, and generative AI.
However, whether that comes with added productivity is a separate argument. Forrester’s vice president and principal analyst J. P. Gownder recently told The Register he is unconvinced that [9]AI will revolutionize productivity .
The Berkeley researchers suggested developing a set of standards to prevent burnout.
This includes "intentional pauses" to fight back against the blurred boundaries between roles, regulate the tempo of development, and make sure tasks that begin with one purpose don’t meander from the company’s goals.
[10]AI has had zero effect on jobs so far, says Yale study
[11]Future jobs in AI will come with a hardhat and boots, tech bigshots argue
[12]Dow Chemical says AI is the element behind 4,500 job cuts
[13]Senate report says AI will take 97M US jobs in the next 10 years, but those numbers come from ChatGPT
"For example, a decision pause could require, before a major decision is finalized, one counterargument and one explicit link to organizational goals — widening the attention field just enough to protect against drift,” the researchers wrote. "Incorporating such pauses into everyday workflow is one way organizations can support better decisions, healthier boundaries, and more sustainable forms of productivity in AI-augmented environments."
They also advise organizations to work on projects in coherent phases and to move forward deliberately rather than at the pace that AI might allow them to move. Make the team lead the AI; don’t let the AI lead the team.
“By regulating the order and timing of work — rather than demanding continuous responsiveness — sequencing can help organizations preserve attention, reduce cognitive overload, and support more thoughtful decision-making in AI-forward workplaces,” they wrote.
Introducing more human interaction can also help prevent the depleting effects of AI-mediated work.
"As AI enables more solo, self-contained work, organizations can benefit from protecting time and space for listening and human connection. Short opportunities to connect with others—whether through brief check-ins, shared reflection moments, or structured dialogue—interrupt continuous solo engagement with AI tools and help restore perspective." ®
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[1] https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aY0KDhlWRpXa-EiSsOnmcAAAAEg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aY0KDhlWRpXa-EiSsOnmcAAAAEg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aY0KDhlWRpXa-EiSsOnmcAAAAEg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aY0KDhlWRpXa-EiSsOnmcAAAAEg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aY0KDhlWRpXa-EiSsOnmcAAAAEg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.forrester.com/report/the-forrester-ai-job-impact-forecast-us-2025-2030/RES190071
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/13/ai_us_jobs_2030/#
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/forrester_ai_jobs_impact/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/01/ai_isnt_taking_people_jobs/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/future_ai_jobs_tech_bigshots/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/dow_chemical_ai_layoffs/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/ai_job_losses_us_senate_report/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Came to say the same thing.
Although I read an internal email from our....not sure what they do....some marketing stuff I think...and boy, within 10 seconds I'd gone "This was created by ChatGPT, because no one actually talks or writes like that.
The technical illiterates in government will take this as a solution for the UK's poor productivity.
And then wonder why it doesn't improve when people realise that the average house price still costs ten times their salary and they'll never be able to afford it, so why bother working harder.
sounds like a lot of BS to me
they picked a single company to prove what exactly?
That relying too much on generative AI is a bad idea?
No shit.
If you hire a bunch of muppets who have to rely on using generative AI to do their work, you reap what you sow.
Please let's not start the productivity argument again.
In my opinion, if AI was genuinely improving productivity, employees could work fewer hours while producing the same output. If they are working more hours, but producing the same output this has lowered productivity. (The article doesn't mention whether there was any observed increase in either quantity or quality of work).
AI can be useful for so many things, I just wish we could use one of the many disused gold mines in Victoria to bury all the slop.
Well according to the study its an illusion. Actual productivity has only increased by a few percent, but employees think they are gaining a lot of productivity and they're working longer hours. The reason for that isn't clear, it sounds like a combination of "wow I can do so much more" and essentially picking up more work and probably some because of the fun/novel aspect for AI that will undoubtedly wear off before long. I imagine the same was true when companies starting adopting PCs - some employees found that "fun" at first too.
I've found the AI stuff handy. Troubleshooting some tricky stuff, click AI Mode on the Google page, no need to log in etc. Ask it a question in plain English instead of poring through countless vendor sites for the answer. Often gets me to consider alternative approaches for tackling the problem that I wasn't aware of. You can ask it follow up questions, it remembers what you have tried previously etc etc.
I'm not at the point of letting it write documentation for me though.
Most importantly what's the quality of the harder faster work? Yeah, I'm going to assume not that great, and if it's great it'll start diminishing and that employee will eventually burnout.
Now evaluate it at a useful company, not a tech bro company.