Those thinking AI will reduce their workloads might be mistaken

Showing all posts about work

Those thinking AI will reduce their workloads might be mistaken

11 February 2026

Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye, writing for Harvard Business Review:

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.

Earlier generations of our families were probably told computers would bring about two-day work weeks. In reality all computers did was free up time to do yet more work.

AI is tracking that way. It might have seen off some aspects of our work, only to allow us to take on other things. But these are early days, and it could be there will be little AI cannot do. Eventually.

I, for one, welcome our new AI agent employer overlords

7 February 2026

AI agents might be smart enough to tell us how to, say, mow the lawn. But an AI agent cannot actually mow a lawn itself. Unless, perhaps, the lawn-mower in question is a smart machine, that an AI agent might be able to control.

Otherwise, when it comes to doing tasks that are hands-on, AI agents are going to need to the help of humans. Enter then RentAHuman, an online work marketplace, where AI agents can advertise jobs they need a person to do on their behalf.

I’m assuming the jobs posted on RentAHuman are real (though I haven’t verified this, nor taken on any work myself), but some of the budgets — with some agents apparently offering one-hundred-and-fifty dollars an hour — don’t look half bad.

This seems a lot like gig-economy type work, so if you want to take a break from being, say, an Uber driver, RentAHuman might be for you. And with websites such as RentAHuman, could we be looking at the future — the medium term future at least — of work?

Copywriters who lost work to AI tell their stories

17 December 2025

Brian Merchant has been collecting stories from copywriters who have lost their jobs to AI powered technologies, as part of a series, AI Killed My Job, that he has been compiling this year.

I’m a writer. I’ll always be a writer when it comes to my off-hours creative pursuits, and I hope to eventually write what I’d like to write full-time. But I had been writing and editing corporate content for various companies for about a decade until spring 2023, when I was laid off from the small marketing startup I had been working at for about six months, along with most of my coworkers.

This is a constant worry to me, as a part time copywriter. To date the company I work for has succeeded in convincing clients that people are better at writing copy than AI is.

But how long that stays the case remains to be seen.

Robotic self-driving vehicles a threat to gig-economy food delivery work

9 October 2025

Robocart, a US company, has been developing self-driving vehicles that have the capacity to deliver ten different customer orders in a single run. The service, which the company plans to launch in Austin, Texas, later this year, will see customers pay just three-dollars per delivery, pricing many people will find attractive.

But Chicago based cybersecurity and network infrastructure expert Nick Espinosa warns that such a service stands to eliminate the roles of many food delivery drivers (YouTube link), working on behalf of companies such as Uber Eats and Door Dash.

Earlier this year, I was hearing stories about Australian web and app developers taking on food delivery work, as AI apps are doing the work they used to, for a fraction of the cost. While many of these people will be able to re-skill and eventually find new work, what will they do in the meantime, if casual work begins drying up?

Are fears of AI caused mass job losses founded or exaggerated?

22 August 2025

California based cybersecurity professional Daniel Miessler is concerned AI technologies might result in large scale job losses:

These are people who’ve been making over $100-200K in tech or tech-adjacent for over a decade. And they can’t find work. I mean they can barely get interviews. And when I say a ton, I mean multiple dozen that I either know or I’m one degree separated from. And again, these are not low-skill people. They’re legit professionals that have never in their life had trouble finding or maintaining work.

What Miessler reports is based on anecdotal evidence, but I’ve heard similar stories — likewise anecdata — locally (NSW, Australia).

On the flip side, Sheryl Estrada, writing for Yahoo Finance, citing recent MIT research, says only a handful of companies have been able to effectively integrate AI technologies into their operations:

But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT’s research points to flawed enterprise integration. Generic tools like ChatGPT excel for individuals because of their flexibility, but they stall in enterprise use since they don’t learn from or adapt to workflows […].

Meanwhile Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) has paused recruiting for its super intelligence division. This after offering one new hire a one and a half billion dollar salary (over four years).

This might not of course mean anything other than perhaps Meta coming to the realisation it is spending money it doesn’t have. As to the wider question of the threat posed to jobs by AI, I think the jury is still out. No one is, as yet, exactly sure what the impact will be.

The work of dredger boat operators is safe from AI technologies

12 August 2025

Writers, authors, proof readers, news analysts, reporters, journalists, and editors, are among occupations Microsoft sees as being vulnerable to AI technologies. A blogger, by the way, is each and every of those roles.

But that’s not all. Web designers, interpreters, historians, and political scientists, are in danger. Mathematicians even. The threat isn’t restricted to what might be called desk-bound occupations either. The roles of customer service reps, hosts, models, and telemarketers, are also on the line.

But there are some professions safe from AI (for now). These include hospital orderlies, motorboat operators, floor sanders, water treatment plant workers, and dredge operators.

Dredger boats often trawl through the waters of the lakes near where we stay on the NSW Central Coast. I was watching one such vessel earlier this year, and, ironically, speculated how the work could be carried out by an AI agent of some sort.

A sophisticated under water camera and sonar array, was part of what came to mind. Instead, it looks like the dredger boat crews will be with us for some time to come.

HR departments relying more on AI tools to screen job applicants

5 July 2025

Danielle Abril, writing for MSN:

Increasingly, job candidates are running into virtual recruiters for screenings. The conversational agents, built on large language models, help recruiting firms and hiring companies respond to every applicant, conduct interviews around-the-clock and find the best candidate in increasingly large talent pools. People who have experienced AI interviews have mixed reviews: surprisingly good or cold and confusing.

Pity the HR departments. It’s hard work having to draw up policies about procedures, and procedures about policies. All of that work leaves no time for their core function: recruiting staff, and managing human resources. By the way, I the find the use of the word resource a particularly odious HR practice. People are people, not resources. Instead of saying “we need to bring in a resource”, try saying “we need to hire a person for this role.”

Anyway, to reduce workloads, and ostensibly speed-up the recruiting process, some HR departments are using AI tools to screen “first-round” candidates for a role. I assume once a “second-round” list (or should that be pool?) of candidates is arrived at, an HR person becomes involved in the process.

No doubt there are large numbers of applicants for advertised roles, and some sort of screening is necessary to shortlist suitable candidates. To ease the burden though, HR staff could use AI tools to write up policies and procedures instead, so they can focus on the human side of the equation.

They could even take advantage of AI note taking apps, further reducing pressure on their time.

AI note takers standing in for online meeting attendees

5 July 2025

Lisa Bonos and Danielle Abril, writing for The Washington Post:

Clifton Sellers attended a Zoom meeting last month where robots outnumbered humans. He counted six people on the call including himself, Sellers recounted in an interview. The 10 others attending were note-taking apps powered by artificial intelligence that had joined to record, transcribe and summarize the meeting.

AI note takers attend online meetings so you don’t have to. They will record the entire meeting, and prepare a summary afterwards. Sounds convenient. Some people though have raised concerns about meeting participants not really participating in meetings, and there they might have a point.

Others are worried that note taking apps are recording the entire conversation. But if it’s a work meeting, and not a private conversation about, say, a highly sensitive matter, is that a major concern? Surely online meeting apps also record, and store, the entire contents of a meeting, even if all participants are fully present? There’s also the point such apps might spill the tea elsewhere.

It’s been a while since I was in a workplace-based situation, but I would’ve relished the opportunity to have an AI note taker stand in for me at meetings. That way I could — you know — do some actual work instead. This sounds like one to AI, I say.

The infinite workday: more work hours and less employee privacy

19 June 2025

Microsoft is calling it the infinite workday.

Based on telemetry data, gleaned from apps including Microsoft 365, the American tech company has found the workday has been gradually becoming longer, and work-related activities are increasingly seeping into the weekend. This for people supposedly working Monday to Friday, between nine o’clock in the morning, until five o’clock in the afternoon.

According to some of Microsoft’s findings, workers are reading emails as early as six in the morning during the week. The same workers may still be on deck well into the evening, attending online meetings, called to cater for colleagues spread across multiple timezones. In addition, workers are more frequently checking email messages during the weekend.

So much for work-life balance, which I’ve always seen as a theoretical construct. Not for real. Bullshit. My workday looks tame by comparison. But the accumulation of the telemetry data used to compile Microsoft’s report is also concerning. Not only are people working longer hours, they are also being surveilled. Some degree — who knows how much precisely — of information about their use of various Microsoft software, is being gathered.

The case for adopting something like LibreOffice, an open source variation of Microsoft products such as Word and Excel, becomes all the stronger. This won’t rectify the problem of working extended hours and weekends, but at least workers won’t have large tech companies keeping tabs on them.

Australian productivity falls, despite record long hours being worked

30 May 2025

Bronwyn Herbert, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

Australians have been working record-long hours, which contributed to the productivity slump, the Productivity Commission report found. Those additional hours performed by workers have not been matched by business investment in systems and technologies that would allow them to work efficiently, according to the report.

In some sectors the apparent decline in workplace productivity can be attributed to a lack of investment in new technologies, including AI. But that’s only part of the problem, and workers also need to be upskilled, if productivity rates are to rise.

I imagine it will be of comfort to some people that upskilling workers is being suggested, by employer advocates no less. This as opposed to the idea that much greater use of AI be made to somehow pickup the shortfall in productivity.

« older posts