Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has rapidly entered the workplace, with companies promising increased productivity and efficiency.

However, I recently read an article that noted that despite the widespread adoption of AI tools, many corporate leaders are getting frustrated. Even though workers are self-reporting AI use, the suits at the top aren't able to pinpoint where the promised productivity gains are going.

I think I have an idea why.

The AI Adoption Landscape

The tendrils of AI are seeping into many professional sectors. Studies from both the EU and the United States reveal a significant percentage of workers are actively using AI tools to improve their workflows. For example, 65% of marketers, 64% of journalists, and 30% of lawyers in Denmark have reported using AI at work. A study of American workers in August 2024 found that a third of respondents had used generative AI in the previous week alone, with ChatGPT leading the pack as the most popular tool, followed by Google’s Gemini (Mollick, 2024).

As Mollick (2024) notes, workers are reporting significant time savings on routine tasks, allowing them to work more efficiently. For example, consultants using GPT-4 were able to complete tasks 25% more quickly than without AI, and early GitHub Copilot users experienced a 26% productivity boost in their coding work. Similarly, the Denmark study revealed that AI users felt their work time had been cut in half for 41% of their tasks.

The frustration for the people at the top of the capitalist ladder is that these productivity gains don't seem to be making the people at the top richer.

When managers and executives observe little organizational improvement from AI, there are a few ways their thought process can go. Perhaps, they might think, AI is all hype? Or maybe they just need to train their workers in AI use? Or perhaps, they should force their workers to attend work in-person (despite studies showing that in-person work is damaging to workers and costs companies more).

However, these efforts all fail to tackle the central concept of AI use: that the real gains are staying right the fuck where they should–with the workers themselves. While individual employees might experience real productivity gains, these benefits are often invisible to corporate leadership.

Plenty of workers aren't interested in sharing their AI use with their employers, either. Some might be afraid of losing their jobs if their AI use is found out, others don't want to be given more work to fill the gaps that AI has created for them. Many companies are also trying to create top-down "one-size-fits-all" approaches to AI use in the workplace, and these are almost invariably destined to fail. AI implementation works best when it's holistic and bottom-up, built from the existing workflows inherent in the organization.

My point is that, far from being lost in the ether, the benefits of AI are going exactly where they should—into the hands of workers and out of the pockets of the exploitative class.

Employees are using AI tools to streamline their daily tasks, getting back valuable time, becoming more autonomous, and living with less stress. People are using the AI gains to live better and be happier, and that's a good thing.

One way AI is helping employees is by eliminating the drudgery of mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on more meaningful and creative work. Rather than spending hours on administrative duties or repetitive processes, workers can use AI to automate these tasks and free up time for deeper, more impactful projects.

If it were up to the corporate leadership, this would also translate into doing more within the time allotted – but doing more isn't the point. Doing better isn't the point, either. Being able to enjoy their lives while doing just enough to maintain a reasonable measure of productivity is a perfectly acceptable baseline – especially when you consider how badly exploited most workers are. (Think about it: your life's hours are being traded away for someone else's profits. That's just not right.)

If one of the main uses of workers is to use the time saved by AI to foster better work-life balance, I say: "Good for them." This could mean having more time to handle personal matters during the workday, such as caring for family members or attending to their own mental health needs. Or, it could mean carving out time for socializing with coworkers, building stronger workplace relationships and improving team dynamics. But whatever their end use: the point is simply that it's good that workers are using AI to support their own needs rather than the needs of the corporations that parasitize their very lives.

This shouldn't be a radical idea, but AI doesn’t have to be about maximizing corporate profits. In fact, AI might be serving a far more wholesome purpose—helping employees lead better, more balanced lives. By removing inefficiencies from their workflows, workers are reclaiming time, not to churn out more work, but to engage in humanizing activities.

And if workers are hiding their AI use? That makes sense: corporations can't be trusted ever, so these workers are doing the smart thing.

So what should the corpos do?

For companies that want to be AI leaders, the way forward is pretty darned simple: they need to shift their focus from short-term productivity to long-term employee well-being.

Companies could also align their reward systems with AI-enabled productivity gains. If employees are successfully using and working with AI, they should be recognized and rewarded for it. This could take the form of cash bonuses, promotions, or greater flexibility in their work arrangements.

Corporations that provide positive support for AI experimentation will ensure that their workers continue to implement AI in ways that actually work. And this process of creating a tech-literate, happy, and mentally healthy workforce will pay dividends over the span of decades (if not the span of individual financial years).

This shift from profit-driven AI to human-centered AI is the true opportunity of our time—and it’s a change that’s well worth embracing.

Bio

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Source: Mollick, E. (2024, October 04). AI in organizations: Some tactics meet the Lab and the Crowd. One Useful Thing.