...
They buried the most interesting finding in the middle of the article. Friction points (waiting for a colleague, staring at a blank page, struggling with an unfamiliar task) create natural rest periods for knowledge workers. When AI eliminates them, the boundary between working and not working becomes trivially easy to cross. The pause disappears, and the work expands to fill every available minute.
The researchers mapped an obvious escalation cycle. AI made tasks faster, which raised expectations for speed, which increased dependence on AI, which expanded the scope of what workers attempted, which increased the total volume of work. One engineer put it plainly: "You had thought that maybe because you could be more productive with AI, you save some time, you can work less. But then really, you don't work less. You just work the same amount or even more." ...
See the full story here: https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it?utm_source=Daily+Email+2025&utm_campaign=d72c6546a9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_02_11_01_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-d72c6546a9-303719286&mc_cid=d72c6546a9&mc_eid=116e9f337b