Does AI increase productivity?
Lately I’ve been wondering whether AI really boosts productivity or if we just feel busier because we’re using new tools. At my job we started using AI to draft reports and summarize meetings. At first it felt like magic — I saved at least an hour a day. But after a few weeks, I noticed I was spending extra time reviewing and correcting outputs. So now I’m not sure if it truly makes us faster, or if it just shifts the type of work we do. Has anyone else experienced this? Does AI genuinely increase productivity long term, or does it just reorganize the workload in a different way?
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I’ve had a similar experience. When my team introduced AI support tools, we definitely cut down on repetitive tasks like data sorting and basic customer replies. The real productivity boost didn’t come from speed alone, though — it came from being able to focus on higher-value work. I once read an interesting breakdown on this topic https://scientificasia.net/the-economics-of-the-service-economy-scaling-human-plus-ai-operations/ , it talks about combining human skills with AI instead of replacing them. That idea made sense to me. AI handles scale and routine, people handle judgment and creativity. In my case, productivity improved once I stopped treating AI like an autopilot and started treating it like an assistant.