The most promising promise surrounding AI at work today It’s not that it’s going to replace us.but it could free ourselves from part of the burden we carry every day. In recent years, much of the technological discourse has insisted on this idea, also driven by the arrival of assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini or the different co-pilots integrated into everyday software: fewer routine tasks, more time to think, create or decide calmly. However, as these tools begin to be truly used in real environments, a question arises that can no longer be ignored: what happens when that promise of relief is confronted with the daily practice of work.
Depletion system. The narrative of relief begins to crack when academic research looks at what happens inside companies. A study published by Harvard Business Review describes that, in the observed case, the AI did not decrease work, but rather tended to intensify it, even without explicit orders to produce more. These findings can be interpreted as a sign of an emerging problem, where increased capacity can push certain organizations towards dynamics close to structural exhaustion, more linked to constant acceleration than to the promised efficiency.
Where does the data come from?. The aforementioned work was developed for eight months within an American technology company with about 200 employees, combining in-person observation two days a week, monitoring of internal communication channels and more than 40 in-depth interviews with engineering, product, design, research and operations profiles. The company did not mandate the use of AI or set new performance goals, although it did offer enterprise subscriptions to business tools, which allowed it to analyze what happened when adoption arose on the initiative of workers.
The pattern behind the promise. Far from a sudden change, the intensification described by the researchers takes the form of a recognizable process. The magazine summarizes its findings in three mechanisms that, combined, transform the daily work experience: progressive expansion of responsibilities, increasingly blurred boundaries between activity and rest, and simultaneous management of multiple tasks supported by AI.
The increased activity began, in many cases, with something that at first glance seemed positive: the feeling of being able to do more on one’s own. It was no secret that AI makes it possible to tackle tasks that previously required external support or specific knowledge, gradually expanding the perimeter of its role. However, this growth did not replace previous responsibilities, but rather added to them and triggered new demands for supervision and adjustment within the teams.
When the pause is no longer a pause. The study also shows that this dynamic not only arises from doing more things, but from doing them at different times. By reducing the initial effort required to begin a task, AI made it easier for work to slide into spaces traditionally reserved for rest, such as meals, short intervals, or the end of the day. Over time, this barely perceptible continuity transformed the work experience into something more constant and less delimited, decreasing resilience even without formally increasing hours.
Fragmentation of care. Harvard Business Review points out that the possibility of executing several actions at the same time, relying on systems that work in the background, pushed many professionals to maintain an increasing number of tasks open simultaneously. This multiplication of fronts generated a feeling of momentum and support, but also required frequently reviewing the results produced by the AI and continuously changing context. As this behavior became habitual, expectations of speed tended to rise within the organization.
A possible way out. The study suggests that the problem does not lie in the technology itself, but in the absence of frameworks that regulate its daily use. Therefore, it proposes developing an “AI practice” based on intentional pauses that allow decisions to be reconsidered, work sequencing that reduces fragmentation, and moments of human connection that counteract isolation. In this scenario, the challenge for companies stops being to adopt more AI and becomes integrating its capacity without eroding the balance of daily work.
Images | Vitaly Gariev
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