At a number of companies, employees compete on leaderboards to show how much A.I. they’re using. They’re racking up big bills along the way.
They just formed the biggest tech worker union in the US. They plan to rein in AI and curb layoffs
"Who AI benefits and who it immiserates often is based on who gets to decide how it’s used. We know how tech is used on the day to day. We should be at the table as well."
Do AI-enabled companies need fewer people? | Seldo.com
AI-native startups are doing more with less — 40% smaller teams, 6x higher revenue per employee — and the data confirms it's not just hype. But the wave of new jobs I predicted hasn't materialized so far. Compute is replacing labor. Will that change?
Avoiding Digital Productivity Traps - Cal Newport
Last week in this newsletter, I summarized some interesting results from a study that analyzed the behavior of 164,000 knowledge workers. It found that introducing ... Read more
Factory Router | Factory.ai
Engineers track leaderboards and spend critical hours evaluating incremental performance gains between models. The most ...
CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story.
How much time workers say the technology saves them on the job is vastly different from what executives report.
Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees | Fortune
Companies are racing to incentivize employees to use AI. But as some companies are finding, the more employees that use the technology, the heavier the bill.
Pacing the Frontier
A statement from over 1000 employees of frontier AI companies
Companies Are Throttling Employees’ AI Use Because It’s Too Expensive
Sources and leaks from Amazon, Adobe, Atlassian, Citi, and more show what is really happening with AI right now: companies are trying to rein in AI use as costs spiral out of control.
Bosses Are Blowing More Money on AI Agents Than It'd Cost Them to Just Pay Human Workers
Some organizings are finding themselves spending more on AI token fees than they do paying human salaries.
‘Deskilling’: a dangerous side effect of AI use
Workers are increasingly reliant on the new technology
Companies Are Being Torn Apart by AI "Workslop," Stanford Research Finds
Not only is AI hampering productivity, but it's also blowing up collaboration and souring employee dynamics.
The Productivity Is Real. The Scaling Isn't.
What running an AI agent team taught me about why organizations can't do what one person can.
A brewing battle: More IT workers want unions. The industry doesn’t.
Rising anger over widespread layoffs, disillusionment with Big Tech, and threats of mass displacement by AI have tech pros taking a good, hard look at unions.
AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them More Intense.
The technology is increasing the speed, density and complexity of work rather than reducing it, a new analysis of 164,000 people’s work activity shows.
AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appears polished but lacks real substance, offloading cognitive labor onto coworkers. Research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford found that 41% of workers have encountered such AI-generated output, costing nearly two hours of rework per instance and creating downstream productivity, trust, and collaboration issues. Leaders need to consider how they may be encouraging indiscriminate organizational mandates and offering too little guidance on quality standards. To counteract workslop, leaders should model purposeful AI use, establish clear norms, and encourage a “pilot mindset” that combines high agency with optimism—promoting AI as a collaborative tool, not a shortcut.
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It
Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye from Berkeley Haas School of Business report initial findings in the HBR from their April to December 2025 study of 200 employees at a …