Time savings from AI: A look at real value
A number worth thinking about
A figure from a National Bureau of Economic Research study deserves attention. Research into the rapid spread of generative artificial intelligence shows this: employees report time savings equivalent to about 1.4% of total work hours. At the scale of an economy, this could be significant.
But this leads to a fundamental question at a smaller scale. Imagine a single employee gains five hours per week through AI. Emails get written faster. Research that took hours now takes minutes. Documents are summarized. Presentations are created quickly. Data gets analyzed. Meeting notes are generated automatically. Multiply those five hours by 48 working weeks and you've created 240 hours of capacity in one year. An impressive number.
And then comes the uncomfortable question:
- What actually happened to those 240 hours?
- Did they lead to more customer interactions?
- Higher revenue?
- Faster processes?
- Lower costs?
- Solutions to difficult problems?
- Better quality?
- More innovation?
Or did the calendar simply fill up again, with more meetings, presentations, analyses, and status reports?
