AI Might Make Your Job More Fun

I was sitting at my kitchen island a couple of weeks ago teasing out the implications of disruptive innovation theory for the artificial intelligence industry as my wife and two of our close friends were getting ready to watch the series finale of Andor. I knew I should close the laptop, but every search turned up one more connection and every edit sharpened the argument. I was using AI tools to help with the research, and they had turned the most tedious part of writing into something genuinely fun. So much so that stopping felt like climbing off a roller coaster just before the first big drop. I eventually did watch Andor that day, but it took way more effort to tear myself away from work than it should have.

This wasn’t (just) a personal failing. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business spent eight months studying what happens when workers at a tech company get access to AI tools. They found that workers moved faster, took on broader tasks, and extended their hours into evenings and early mornings. Nobody told them to, and the company didn’t mandate the use of AI. These workers did more because AI made it, in the words of the researchers, “intrinsically rewarding.” They described feeling like they had a “partner” that helped them push through their workload. They didn’t just do more in less time – they did more in more time, of their own volition.