nihanalp

A super interesting new study from Harvard Business Review. A 8-month field study at a US tech company with about 200 employees found that AI use did not shrink work, it intensified it, and made employees busier. Task expansion happened because AI filled in gaps in knowledge, so people started doing work that used to belong to other roles or would have been outsourced or deferred. That shift created extra coordination and review work for specialists, including fixing AI-assisted drafts and coaching colleagues whose work was only partly correct or complete. Boundaries blurred because starting became as easy as writing a prompt, so work slipped into lunch, meetings, and the minutes right before stepping away. Multitasking rose because people ran multiple AI threads at once and kept checking outputs, which increased attention switching and mental load. Over time, this faster rhythm raised expectations for speed through what became visible and normal, even without explicit pressure from managers.

This is going to revolutionize education 📚 Google just launched "Learn Your Way" that basically takes whatever boring chapter you're supposed to read and rebuilds it around stuff you actually give a damn about. Like if you're into basketball and have to learn Newton's laws, suddenly all the examples are about dribbling and shooting. Art kid studying economics? Now it's all gallery auctions and art markets. Here's what got me though. They didn't just find-and-replace examples like most "personalized" learning crap does. The AI actually generates different ways to consume the same information: - Mind maps if you think visually - Audio lessons with these weird simulated teacher conversations - Timelines you can click around - Quizzes that change based on what you're screwing up They tested this on 60 high schoolers. Random assignment, proper study design. Kids using their system absolutely destroyed the regular textbook group on both immediate testing and when they came back three days later. Every single one said it made them more confident. The part that surprised me? They actually solved the accuracy problem. Most ed-tech either dumbs everything down to nothing or gets basic facts wrong. These guys had real pedagogical experts evaluate every piece on like eight different measures. Look, textbooks have sucked for centuries not because publishers are idiots, but because making personalized versions was basically impossible at scale. That just changed. This isn't some K-12 thing either. Corporate training could work this way. Technical documentation. Professional development. Imagine if every boring compliance course used examples from your actual job instead of generic office scenarios. We might have just watched the industrial education model crack for the first time. About damn time.