Harvard Business Review studied, 200 employees over 8 months and found AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it. Here’s why:

Tasks expand. AI fills knowledge gaps, so people start doing work that used to belong to other roles or get outsourced. That creates more coordination and review for specialists who now have to fix half-right AI drafts.

Boundaries blur. When starting work is as easy as typing a prompt, work seeps into lunch breaks, meetings, and the last few minutes before logging off.

Multitasking spikes. Running multiple AI threads and monitoring outputs increases attention-switching and mental load.

Speed expectations rise. Faster output becomes the new normal — not because managers demanded it, but because it simply became visible and expected.

It seems as though AI shifts the type of work more than it reduces the amount of it.