There's a Google commercial airing during the Olympics in which someone asks Google AI assistant Gemini for help writing a fan letter on their daughter's behalf. One hopes there's a follow-up commercial detailing how someone besieged with AI-generated fan mail can use AI to manage the demands on their attention and triage the work all that fan mail created. It would land with people suffering from email overload.
As of now, AI sorts my email into a focused inbox or "other," but it's not particularly good at recognizing which unsolicited press releases can be consigned to "other." It can autocomplete sentences -- not the way I would have completed them, but it can recognize that I'm writing sentences nonetheless. It can suggest sending times if I'm corresponding with someone across the country. None of that makes the chore of plowing through 300+ messages a day any easier.
What I want is an AI that triages my inbox for me; every time I access my email, I'd have a list of what to tackle in descending order of urgency. I'd like AI that remembers my most frequent searches ("find all emails with attachments from the last month"), does them for me regularly and presents the results in a separate window. I'd like email AI that can create complex if-then rules ("if the email contains the words 'artificial intelligence' and does not come from an in-house address, then sort it to a specific 'AI press releases' folder") based on observing my activity for a day, then double-checks the rules with me to make sure it's on the right track.
I do not want an AI that finishes my sentences for me, mostly because the autocomplete feature rarely finishes them with either the intent of my sentence or with words I'd actually use. This alleged time-saving feature has lengthened my average composition time for a simple message because now I have to review whether or not everything in that email is what I wrote. It's nice that this feature helps out people who use email to write standardized or similar emails to lots of people, but email is not a one-size-fits-all program, and assuming all communications are the same only makes more work for human beings.
I don't want AI tools that introduce errors or alter intent into what should be simple replies. I want AI tools that live up to the promise of "boosting productivity" by freeing up my time and mental space. As a humble worker bee, I'm not alone. According to a recent Upwork blog post:
The latest Upwork research—surveying 2,500 global C-suite executives, full-time employees, and freelancers in the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada—uncovers that executives’ expectations of AI’s ability to improve efficiency are high. Ninety-six percent of C-suite leaders say they expect the use of AI tools to increase their company’s overall productivity levels. For many workers, however, the path to value isn’t clear, and some say AI may even make their jobs harder.
Moreover, Upwork notes:
Among the increased demands executives have placed on workers in the past year, requesting they use AI tools to increase their output tops the list (37%). Already 39% of companies require employees to use AI tools, with an additional 46% encouraging employees to use the tools without mandating that they do so.
The obvious challenge for workplace leaders -- and the obvious question for workers -- is what will happen in a company where workers are expected to use tools that actually make their jobs harder?
Much of the conversation around AI's value in the enterprise has rightfully centered around how to measure the return on investment. Part of that conversation needs to include how workers want to improve their workflows -- not how the companies that want to sell AI services to you think they should.
