The C-suite is fawning over AI, but workers say its productivity gains are a mirage
More than half of employees surveyed by freelancing platform UpWork said they are struggling to meet rising employer demands.
AI was supposed to make workers into efficiency machines, but a new survey reveals it’s actually doing the opposite.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, the number of AI enterprise tools has exploded, and many executives have high hopes the tools will make their workers more efficient. But a new survey from freelancing platform UpWork revealed that 77% of employees say AI tools have actually made them less productive and added to their workload. Around half of the employees surveyed also said they had no idea how they will achieve the productivity gains their employers expect.
The feedback from employees is a stark contrast with the optimistic views of surveyed executives, nearly all of which said they expect AI tools to increase worker productivity. Just over a third of the C-suite leaders surveyed said they have started mandating the use of some AI tools.
Relations between employees and employers are increasingly fraught as the economy slows and unemployment ticks up. As the red-hot job market of the past few years fades, more employees are choosing to stay in their jobs rather than look for greener pastures.
At the same time, thanks in part to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the success of his “year of efficiency” changes, many executives have started demanding more from workers over the past year, including 81% of those surveyed by UpWork.
AI tools have increasingly been implemented as supposed productivity boosters at the world’s largest companies, including JPMorgan Chase, which recently launched an AI-based “research analyst” chatbot to help with writing and idea generation, among other things.
Still, executives’ desire to incorporate AI into employee work processes may be complicated by the technological skills of older workers.
A Pew Research survey from December found that the U.S. workforce has more employees over 65 than ever before—and employees 55 and older will make up a quarter of the workforce in less than a decade, according to an analysis from Bain & Co.
The increasing demands of employers and the shift to incorporate AI is already weighing on employees, with more than half of workers saying they struggle with employer demands and are burnt out, according to the UpWork survey.
