We were promised liberation. The rise of artificial intelligence in the workplace was meant to mark the end of drudgery — a new age where dull, repetitive tasks would be handed over to machines, freeing us for more “meaningful” work. But if you ask the modern worker whether their day feels lighter, freer, or more creative, you’re likely to get a weary shake of the head.
Instead, AI has begun to play a familiar role: the next link in a long chain of technological promises that end up tightening the leash. Like email before it — once lauded as the great communication enabler — AI is quickly becoming another accelerant of expectations, another engine of burnout.
In the 1990s, when email first flooded into the workplace, the narrative was similarly utopian. It would remove friction, improve collaboration, reduce time spent in meetings. And it did — but only in part. What also happened is that email extended the workday, blurred the boundary between work and home, and introduced a culture of constant availability. Today, the average office worker receives more than 120 emails per day and spends hours sifting through them. Communication hasn’t become more efficient; it’s become more frantic.
Now AI is stepping into the same pattern, supercharging our capacity to produce — but not shortening our hours or easing the pressure. In fact, early research suggests the opposite. A 2024 study by the Upwork Research Institute found that while 64% of companies are introducing AI tools to “boost productivity,” over three-quarters of workers said their workloads had actually increased. Nearly half admitted they weren’t sure how to meet the new, AI-inflated expectations. And 71% of full-time employees said they felt burnt out.
So what happened to the dream?
The problem is not the technology itself — it’s how we measure success. In a workplace culture obsessed with outputs and KPIs, any tool that improves efficiency doesn’t lead to fewer hours worked. It leads to more being expected, faster. If you used to write three reports a week and can now write five with AI assistance, five will become the new standard. And the sixth will be expected in your “free” time.
This isn’t just an anecdotal grumble from the overworked and under-thanked. A growing body of academic research backs it up. In The Overworked American, economist Juliet Schor documented how the digital revolution has coincided not with leisure, but with escalating demands on employees. More recently, sociologist Judy Wajcman has pointed out that despite “labour-saving” technologies, we are more time-pressed than ever. The logic of capitalism doesn’t reward saved time — it monetises it.
AI, in this respect, is just the latest productivity treadmill. It can churn out emails, schedule meetings, summarise reports, and generate drafts in seconds — and so we must now do everything faster. We are no longer measured by the hours we put in, but by the scale and speed of our AI-augmented output. The tool becomes the standard.
It’s telling, too, how AI is being implemented. Rarely with deep worker consultation, and often with ambiguous promises about “efficiency.” There’s a worrying gap between what C-suite executives say about AI and what workers experience. Leaders may claim AI will “augment” human creativity, but on the ground it often feels more like an extra layer of surveillance, another way to quantify performance, to measure keystrokes and output per hour.
There is still time to change course. AI doesn’t have to be a burden. But that will require a cultural shift — one that starts with how we define productivity and success. If we continue to equate value with volume, and hours with commitment, no machine will ever set us free.
Instead, employers must rethink how AI is rolled out — not as a tool to extract more, but as a genuine support. Workers should have a say in how it’s used, and the goal should be less about acceleration and more about sustainability. We need policies that prioritise human welfare alongside innovation. Because a burnt-out workforce, however augmented, is not a productive one.
Until then, AI won’t be making our lives easier. In that way, it’s not the future of work. It’s the logical continuation of everything that’s come before, it did however help me write this article in very little time.
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