AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It

That’s the AI paradox: even though AI is supposed to boost our productivity, we have less and less time. Researchers Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye sum it up perfectly in our Good Read of the Week:

“AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It.”

Specifically, they write:

“In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, 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 two researchers “identified three main forms of intensification:

❌ Task expansion.
❌ Blurred boundaries between work and non-work.
❌ More multitasking.”

Their recommendation is clear:

“Asking employees to self-regulate isn’t a winning strategy. Rather, companies need to develop a set of norms and standards around AI use—what we call an “AI practice.””

In their article, they also provide specific recommendations for an AI practice:

👉 https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it

At Datentreiber, we use the Strategy Pyramid Canvas to work with stakeholders to design the core values and guidelines for their data & AI strategy.