A study by ActivTrak shows AI adoption is increasing workloads, not reducing them, with employees working longer hours.
A recent study by ActivTrak reveals that the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is resulting in greater workloads for employees rather than alleviating them. The research analyzed data from 164,000 workers across 1,111 companies, evaluating a total of 443 million working hours before and after AI tools were implemented.
Key Findings
Notably, the study showed significant changes in work patterns: Communication through emails and messaging services has more than doubled; the engagement with business systems, such as HR and accounting, jumped by 94%; and the amount of time allocated for concentrated work, like coding or strategic initiatives, dropped by 9%.
“AI does create efficiencies, but these freed-up resources are quickly reallocated to other tasks, leading to an unnoticed increase in workload,” said Gabriela Mauch from ActivTrak.
Additionally, statistics indicate that AI users are actually working longer hours, averaging eight minutes more than their peers who do not utilize these technologies.
Adoption Metrics
The share of employees engaging with AI has surged from 53% to 80%, with the time spent on AI tasks increasing eightfold. As of January 2024, nearly 40% of users have been interacting with AI for over 13 months, yet only 9% have used it for a single month. Notably, even with this high adoption rate, evidence supporting claims that AI reduces overall work hours remains absent.
Employees showing the highest productivity levels are those who dedicate 7-10% of their work time to AI; however, this group constitutes only 3% of users, while the majority use AI for only 1% of their working hours.
Popular AI Tools
On average, companies now utilize two AI tools, with projections predicting this will rise to seven by 2025. A staggering 83% of organizations employ six or more AI solutions simultaneously, leading to an increasingly diverse technological toolkit.
ChatGPT remains the frontrunner in terms of usage, far outpacing its closest competitor, Cursor, by a margin of 27 times. Furthermore, the website for ChatGPT has risen sharply in popularity, moving from the 19th to the 5th most visited site, with a 145% increase in annual audience engagement.
This study corroborates findings from a similar analysis conducted by Harvard Business Review, which tracked employee habits at a tech firm with about 200 staff over eight months.
