Staunching the Flow of Street People and Van Lifers: AI to the Rescue
May 14, 2025
AI May Create More Work for Some, Minimal Time-Savings for the Rest
Is it inevitable that labor-saving innovations end up creating more work for some? Ars Technica tells us “Time Saved by AI Offset by New Work Created, Study Suggests.” Performed by economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard, the study examined the 2023-2024 labor market in Denmark. Their key findings suggest that, despite rapid and widespread adoption, generative AI had no significant impact on wages or employment. Writer Benj Edwards, though, is interested in a different statistic. The researchers found that:
“While corporate investment boosted AI tool adoption—saving time for 64 to 90 percent of users across studied occupations—the actual benefits were less substantial than expected. The study revealed that AI chatbots actually created new job tasks for 8.4 percent of workers, including some who did not use the tools themselves, offsetting potential time savings. For example, many teachers now spend time detecting whether students use ChatGPT for homework, while other workers review AI output quality or attempt to craft effective prompts.”
Gee, could anyone have foreseen such complications? The study found an average time-savings of about an hour per week. So the 92% of folks who do not get more work can take a slightly longer break? Perhaps, perhaps not. We learn that finding contradicts a recent randomized controlled trial indicating an average 15% increase in worker productivity. Humlum believes his teams’ results may be closer to the truth for most workers:
“Humlum suggested to The Register that the difference stems from other experiments focusing on tasks highly suited to AI, whereas most real-world jobs involve tasks AI cannot fully automate, and organizations are still learning how to integrate the tools effectively. And even where time was saved, the study estimates only 3 to 7 percent of those productivity gains translated into higher earnings for workers, raising questions about who benefits from the efficiency.”
Who, indeed. Edwards notes it is too soon to draw firm conclusions. Generative AI in the workforce was very new in 2023 and 2024, so perhaps time has made AI assistance more productive. The study was also limited to Denmark, so maybe other countries are experiencing different results. More study is needed, he concludes. Still, does the Danish study call into question what we thought we knew about AI and productivity? This is good news for some.
Cynthia Murrell, May 14, 2025
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