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The AI Revolution Isn’t Happening

And we can prove it.

Will Lockett

Published in

Predict

4 min readJul 28, 2024

AI promises to revolutionise the workspace. By now, there is an AI tool to replace or augment every job under the Sun and send productivity through the roof. There are even entire industries, such as copywriting, that many predict will be entirely replaced by AI tools within the next few years. But what happens when you look past the hype and at how AI is actually affecting the work environment? Well, A study from the Upwork Research Institute has done just that and uncovered some worrying results.

This study surveyed 2,500 global C-suite executives, full-time employees and freelancers regarding their opinions on AI. What they found was a fascinating split in opinion and experience.

Overall, 96% of executive-level managers expected AI to boost worker productivity and reported high hopes for the technology. In fact, 81% of executive-level managers said they had increased demands on their workers in the past year, aligning with their roll-out of AI.

But the opposite was true for employees. 77% reported that AI had increased their workload. Why? Well, 39% reported having to spend more time reviewing or moderating AI-generated content. Furthermore, 47% of employees using AI said they have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employers expect, and 40% feel their company is asking too much of them when it comes to AI. As such, 71% of employees reported being burnt out, and 65% reported not being able to meet their employer’s demands on their productivity.

In other words, those pushing AI into the workspace expect it to make substantial productivity gains, but those actually using these AI tools are struggling to find such gains and, as such, are being overworked to make up for the deficit.

Now, this study was funded by a freelancer marketplace, so its findings might definitely be skewed, as AI directly competes with their product. But, there are third parties who have found similar results. For example, ING found that productivity will only increase by 0.1% as AI is embraced by the economy. Even MIT has published research highlighting how AI isn’t increasing productivity.

But we have been here before. Back in the 70s and 80s, the US rapidly adopted IT technology, which…

Interesting that what is feared hasn’t happened but almost the opposite. I have two sons who work as devs and they can see the benefits but also are scathing about what it promises to be able to do. I suspect the promises are made by those who have…

None of the employee comments and results are surprising. It is exactly what we would expect to see.

Also, the expectations of CxOs are inline with their expectations for all new technologies through history, as they listen to the hype of the…

Interesting.

An analogy.

I spent a long time teaching photography.

The start point was what I called 'camera operator skills' because going from a happy snap to a top of the line DSLR generally resulted in more confusion.

So the student had gone from ok…