Contrary to the promise of more leisure time, AI is practically leading to work intensification. Since the tools make more ambitious projects possible, expectations for output expand endlessly. Without recalibrating what constitutes "enough," this trend risks widespread employee burnout.

AI tools don't lead to more leisure time; they intensify work by providing massive leverage. Users can execute ideas more easily and tackle more ambitious projects. The net result is an increase in output and project scope, allowing individuals to accomplish more in a day, often with less fatigue because tedious tasks are automated.

An AI agent's work output can be staggering, comparable to a high-salaried software engineer working around the clock. By simply texting instructions, a user can prompt the agent to build complex systems, generating logs that reveal an "insane" amount of published work overnight.

Contrary to the narrative of AI reducing work, heavy users find it intensifies their workload. The immense leverage from AI makes it easier to get ideas off the ground and produce more in-depth output. This shifts the productivity gain from "working less" to "achieving more," leading to more complex projects, not more free time.

A Berkeley Haas study finds AI doesn't reduce work but intensifies it through 'task expansion.' Professionals use AI to venture into adjacent roles—like product managers writing code—widening their job scope and increasing total output, rather than simply doing their old job faster.

Mathematician Terence Tao finds AI doesn't speed up his core problem-solving but makes his papers "richer" by adding complex plots and deeper literature searches. Tasks that were previously infeasible are now easy. AI expands the scope and quality of work rather than just shortening the timeline for existing tasks.

According to OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, the true impact of AI code generation is less about a linear speedup on existing tasks. Instead, it expands the scope of what's feasible, allowing engineers to attempt projects they would have previously deemed not worth the effort or beyond their skillset.

A UC Berkeley study found employees using AI worked faster and took on broader tasks, leading to more hours worked, not fewer. AI offloads menial labor, making jobs more purpose-driven and motivating employees to do more, which increases stress and burnout.

The role of a top engineer is shifting from writing code to orchestrating multiple AI agents simultaneously. Notion's co-founder now queues tasks for AIs to work on while he's away, becoming a manager of AI talent rather than just an individual contributor, dramatically multiplying his leverage.