Artificial intelligence has been promising for years to free us from repetitive work, giving us precious moments to think, create and innovate. In the dominant narrative, algorithms and generating systems represent the engine of a new productive efficiency: more speed, less fatigue, better results. But what really happens when this technology enters office everyday? Is the time we earn really returned to people or is it immediately absorbed by the production system?
In these weeks I was particularly impressed by an article published in Corriere della Sera, written by Eugenio Spagnuolo, entitled Italians earn time at work with artificial intelligence. Then I forgive him to correct the errors that the AI does. A title that clearly tells a more evident contradiction in the relationship between technology and work.
The article starts with information that, at first glance, appears encouraging: “four Italian workers out of ten save up to one day of work per week thanks to artificial intelligence.” This data comes from the analysis of Workday, a company specialized in software for financial management and human resources, which published the research Beyond Productivity: Measuring the Real Value of AI, conducted by Hanover Research on 3,200 workers in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. A result that confirms how these tools are entering the production processes stably.
But the same survey cited in the piece also shows the other side of the medal. “Almost 40% of that time earned is lost almost immediately, used to correct errors and verify output not always reliable.” In other words, artificial intelligence accelerates activity, but generates new control operations.
It’s not a marginal detail. According to the above study, “a worker on two in Italy spends between one and two hours a week repairing the damage caused by the AI that should have helped him.” The result is a fragile balance between benefits and cognitive costs.
Another surprising percentage is also highlighted: only 14% of employees get positive results from artificial intelligence consistently.” All others move in a gray area made of intermittent benefits, continuous checks and tools often not perfectly integrated in everyday activities.
Particularly interesting is the behaviour of younger generations. In the article we read that “employees between 25 and 34 years are 46% of those facing the greater volume of corrections”. Those who should be more comfortable with digital technologies are those who spend more time controlling their inaccuracies.
The sociologist Ulrich Beck already spoke in the nineties of “reflexive modernity”, a phase of modernity in which scientific and technological progress produces not only benefits, but also new problems and risks that society is constantly called to manage. Artificial intelligence seems to fit perfectly into this dynamic: it generates efficiency, but parallelly it generates additional tasks of supervision and human control.
Even sociologist Richard Sennett has repeatedly observed that organizational and technological innovations can intensify pressure on the worker rather than reduce it. When systems become faster and more efficient, expectations on results also grow.
This paradox not only concerns the experience of individual workers: according to the research mentioned, many companies prefer to reinvest productivity gains in new technologies or increase workloads, while only a part of the organizations uses that time to develop skills and strategic capabilities.
Yet the realities that invest in training seem to achieve the best results. Workers who receive greater preparation can use AI not as a substitute for human thought, but as an amplifier of their own abilities. The lesson, perhaps, is simple but fundamental: technology alone is not enough. Artificial intelligence can make activities faster, but only people can make them smarter.
If the organizations that manage the work will be able to transform the time gained in knowledge, creativity and strategic thinking, then AI can really keep the promise that accompanies it for years: not replace the human being, but free it from repetitive tasks to focus on what can do better: innovation and complex decisions.
The future of the professions will therefore not depend only on the algorithms we will use, but on the social and cultural choices that we will model around it.
And that’s where the real game will be played.
L’articolo The IA paradox in offices: faster but no more free proviene da IlNewyorkese.
