Invisible work of AI adoption - who absorbs the cost of making AI output usable (All Tech Is Human white paper)

Executives are getting increasingly good at measuring what AI produces. What many are not measuring is the work required to make that output usable, and who is absorbing the cost.

A new white paper from All Tech Is Human, based on workshops with mid-level professionals and executives asked mirrored questions, highlights a striking disconnect. Staff describe spending increasing amounts of time checking AI outputs for hallucinations, tone and compliance, with some describing the work simply as "babysitting AI slop". They are also training colleagues, correcting poor outputs and translating generic AI strategies into workflows that actually work for their teams.

Much of that labour is invisible in the productivity calculation. At the same time, the middle-management layer doing much of this coordination is often precisely the layer executives are considering for AI-driven flattening.

That creates a problem with the way we are accounting for AI productivity. If one person's AI-generated output requires another person's time to validate, contextualise and operationalise, the productivity gain may be real for the first person while being largely transferred to the second.

Eventually, that transfer has to show up somewhere - in burnout, attrition, slower execution or declining quality - even if the original productivity calculation never captured it.

Before claiming an AI productivity gain, ask a simple question: who absorbed the work required to make the output usable, and was their time included in the calculation?

#FutureOfWork #AIAdoption #Leadership

https://lnkd.in/eUHNW8e8

New white paper! Two Views of the Same Transformation: AI Adoption, Invisible Work, and the Human Side of Organizational Change

alltechishuman.substack.com