Why AI Is Increasing Workplace Complexity Instead Of Reducing Employee Workloads

Forbes Senior Contributor and author of 'Brain Rush: How to Invest and Compete in the Real World of Generative AI' Peter Cohan sat down with Forbes Talks to discuss why AI is currently increasing the complexity and density of work rather than reducing it. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2026/03/12/ai-was-supposed-to-free-workers-instead-its-burying-them-in-busywork/ Artificial intelligence is driving workers to spend more time on busy work – squeezing out time they could be devoting to more valuable activities such as creating new growth opportunities. That is the conclusion of a survey of 164,000 workers’ digital work activity, according to ActivTrak research featured in the Wall Street Journal.  Following their companies’ adoption of AI, those workers more than doubled the time they spent on email, messaging and chat apps and boosted by 94% their use of human-resources or accounting software, added the Journal. Rather than freeing them, AI drags them away from creative work. How so? The time AI users devoted to "focused, uninterrupted work — for solving complex problems, writing formulas, creating and strategizing—fell 9%, compared with nearly no change for nonusers,” noted the Journal. Sadly, all that time working on emails and accounting is the least valuable activity for companies seeking to benefit from their AI investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices