Research indicates heavy AI users are burning out at work and 'twice as likely to quit'

Some new research is suggesting that AI may cause burnout in employees who heavily use the tech.

A survey from the Upwork Research Institute (spotted by ZDNet) drew some interesting conclusions and highlighted a big difference in the impact of AI usage in staff members employed at a company versus freelancers.

There's a clear enough message that AI can help drive better productivity, with 77% of executives saying that they had observed gains in that department thanks to the tech, and employees estimating that they're 40% more productive using AI tools.

That isn't surprising given that AI can make some grunt work tasks a lot easier - such as summarizing a big document to give you the key takeaways, for example.

However, there's a catch with AI in the workplace, and the research found that the "most productive AI users are also 88% more likely to be burned out (and) disengaged", and "twice as likely to quit" their job.

The same wasn't true for freelancers, though. Upwork's survey found that 88% of freelancers claim that AI has positively impacted their careers, and the company noted:

"Freelancers are just as productive with AI, but more in control, more resilient, and more focused on leveraging AI for their own personal growth and development."

The Upwork Research Institute also constructs an argument that where companies are going wrong is that they are looking at AI in terms of optimizing output, rather than focusing on 'connection'.

The executive summary of the research notes:

"90% of workers see AI as a coworker. Among top AI performers, 67% trust AI more than colleagues, and 64% say they have a better relationship with AI than with their teammates."

Of course, solitary freelancers may indeed see AI as more of a coworker seeing as they may not necessarily have coworkers as such - or at least, not people they have much contact with beyond brief messages.

Trusting AI more than your colleagues is, of course, a dubious path to tread. Yes, fellow humans can, and may well, be dishonest at times - and AI is more trustworthy in that respect, but it can get things wrong (badly at times) and hallucinate.