There’s been a lot speak not too long ago – particularly amongst politicians – about productiveness. And for good purpose: Australia’s labour productiveness progress sits at a 60-year low.
To deal with this, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has convened a productiveness spherical desk subsequent month. This may coincide with the discharge of an interim report from the Productiveness Fee, which is 5 pillars of reform. Certainly one of these is the function of knowledge and digital applied sciences, together with synthetic intelligence (AI).
This might be music to the ears of the tech and enterprise sectors, which have been enthusiastically selling the productiveness advantages of AI. Actually, the Enterprise Council of Australia additionally stated final month that AI is the one biggest alternative in a technology to elevate productiveness.
However what do we actually find out about how AI impacts productiveness?
What’s productiveness?
Put merely, productiveness is how a lot output (items and providers) we will produce from a given quantity of inputs (corresponding to labour and uncooked supplies). It issues as a result of larger productiveness usually interprets to the next lifestyle. Productiveness progress has accounted for 80 per cent of Australia’s revenue progress over the previous three a long time.
Productiveness could be considered particular person, organisational or nationwide.
Your particular person productiveness is how effectively you handle your time and sources to finish duties. What number of emails are you able to reply to in an hour? What number of merchandise are you able to test for defects in a day?
Organisational productiveness is how properly an organisation achieves its targets. For instance, in a analysis organisation, what number of top-quality analysis papers are produced?
Nationwide productiveness is the financial effectivity of a nation, typically measured as gross home product per hour labored. It’s successfully an combination of the opposite kinds. Nevertheless it’s notoriously troublesome to trace how adjustments in particular person or organisational productiveness translate into nationwide GDP per hour labored.
AI and particular person productiveness
The nascent analysis inspecting the connection between AI and particular person productiveness exhibits combined outcomes.
A 2025 real-world research of AI and productiveness concerned 776 skilled product professionals at US multinational firm Procter & Gamble. The research confirmed that people randomly assigned to make use of AI carried out in addition to a staff of two with out. An identical research in 2023 with 750 consultants from Boston Consulting Group discovered duties have been 18 per cent quicker with generative AI.
A 2023 paper reported on an early generative AI system in a Fortune 500 software program firm utilized by 5,200 buyer assist brokers. The system confirmed a 14 per cent enhance within the variety of points resolved per hour. For much less skilled brokers, productiveness elevated by 35 per cent.
However AI doesn’t at all times enhance particular person productiveness.
A survey of two,500 professionals discovered generative AI really elevated workload for 77 per cent of staff. Some 47 per cent stated they didn’t know how you can unlock productiveness advantages. The research factors to limitations corresponding to the necessity to confirm and/or appropriate AI outputs, the necessity for AI upskilling, and unreasonable expectations about what AI can do.
A current CSIRO research examined the every day use of Microsoft 365 Copilot by 300 workers of a authorities organisation. Whereas the bulk self-reported productiveness advantages, a sizeable minority (30 per cent) didn’t. Even these staff who reported productiveness enhancements anticipated higher productiveness advantages than have been delivered.
AI and organisational productiveness
It’s troublesome, if not inconceivable, to attribute adjustments in an organisation’s productiveness to the introduction of AI. Companies are delicate to many social and organisational components, any one in all which could possibly be the explanation for a change in productiveness.
Nonetheless, the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Growth (OECD) has estimated the productiveness advantages of conventional AI – that’s, machine studying utilized for an industry-specific process – to be zero to 11 per cent on the organisational stage.
A 2024 abstract paper cites unbiased research displaying will increase in organisational productiveness from AI in Germany, Italy and Taiwan.
In distinction, a 2022 evaluation of 300,000 US corporations didn’t discover a important correlation between AI adoption and productiveness, however did for different applied sciences corresponding to robotics and cloud computing. Doubtless explanations are that AI hasn’t but had an impact on many corporations, or just that it’s too arduous to disentangle the influence of AI given it’s by no means utilized in isolation.
AI productiveness will increase can even typically be masked by further human labour wanted to coach or function AI programs. Take Amazon’s Simply Stroll Out know-how for retailers.
Publicly launched in 2018, it was supposed to cut back labour as buyer purchases could be totally automated. Nevertheless it reportedly relied on hiring round 1,000 staff in India for high quality management. Amazon has labelled these studies “faulty”.
Extra typically, take into consideration the unknown quantity (however probably hundreds of thousands) of individuals paid to label knowledge for AI fashions.
AI and nationwide productiveness
The image at a nationwide stage is even murkier.
Clearly, AI hasn’t but impacted nationwide productiveness. It may be argued that know-how developments take time to have an effect on nationwide productiveness, as firms want to determine how you can use the know-how and put the required infrastructure and expertise in place.
Nevertheless, this isn’t assured. For instance, whereas there’s consensus that the web led to productiveness enhancements, the consequences of cellphones and social media are extra contested, and their impacts are extra obvious in some industries (corresponding to leisure) than others.
Productiveness isn’t simply doing issues quicker
The frequent narrative round AI and productiveness is that AI automates mundane duties, making us quicker at doing issues and giving us extra time for artistic pursuits. This, nonetheless, is a naive view of how work occurs.
Simply because you possibly can take care of your inbox extra shortly doesn’t imply you’ll spend your afternoon on the seashore. The extra emails you hearth off, the extra you’ll obtain again, and the endless cycle continues.
Sooner isn’t at all times higher. Generally, we have to decelerate to be extra productive. That’s when nice concepts occur.
Think about a world wherein AI isn’t merely about dashing up duties however proactively slows us down, to offer us area to be extra revolutionary, and extra productive. That’s the actual untapped alternative with AI.
Revealed on July 13, 2025
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