Generative AI is ramping up work for some employees
A UC Berkeley Haas study found that generative AI, instead of lightening the load, is actually ramping up work for some employees.
Researchers spent eight months at a US tech company and published a report about their in-progress, eight-month ethnography in the Harvard Business Review.
Employees are doing extra tasks, AI prompts during breaks
After giving 200 employees access to AI tools, researchers noticed three things:
people started doing extra tasks outside their usual roles (like designers crunching data),
the line between work and downtime got fuzzy as AI prompts popped up even during breaks,
and everyone was juggling more tasks at once—think coding while chatting with an AI agent.
'Always-on' cycle can lead to burnout, lower-quality work
The study warns that this "always-on" cycle can lead to burnout and lower-quality work.
As one participant put it: "You had thought that maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI, then you save some time, you can work less. But then really, you don't work less. You just work the same amount or even more."
The researchers suggest building in intentional breaks so the tech helps rather than overwhelms.