TL;DR

A Harvard Business Review study tracking 40 workers at a tech company over eight months found that employees who embraced AI tools voluntarily worked faster, took on more tasks, and extended work into evenings and breaks — without being asked. The result was not a productivity revolution but a growing risk of burnout.

More work, not less

UC Berkeley researchers Aruna Ranganathan and Maggie Ye studied employees across engineering, product, design, research, and operations roles. The company did not mandate AI use, though it provided enterprise subscriptions.

Workers reported that AI made starting tasks easier, reducing the intimidation of a blank page. They also became more willing to take on responsibilities from other roles. But because tasks felt more achievable, work began bleeding into lunch breaks, evenings, and early mornings, with fewer natural pauses in the day.

“What looks like higher productivity in the short run can mask silent workload creep and growing cognitive strain,” the researchers wrote. “Because the extra effort is voluntary and often framed as enjoyable experimentation, it is easy for leaders to overlook how much additional load workers are carrying.”

The hidden costs

Engineers found themselves checking the work of novice coders, coaching colleagues who relied heavily on AI, and finishing projects that others had started. The researchers warned that this voluntary intensity could impair judgement, increase errors, and mask unsustainable work patterns as productivity gains.

“For workers, the cumulative effect is fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that work is harder to step away from,” the paper stated.

Looking forward

The researchers suggest organisations introduce “intentional pauses” and deliberate sequencing of work to prevent AI-driven overload. Their core message: let the team lead the AI, not the other way around. As AI tools become standard across workplaces, managing the human side of adoption may prove harder than the technical implementation.