The Productivity Trap

The promises are familiar: AI takes over routine, speeds up processes, reduces effort, and makes workers more productive. What is rarely asked is what actually happens to the time that gets saved.

In most companies, it does not belong to the people who saved it. If a task that used to take two hours now takes thirty minutes, that usually does not lead to an earlier finish. The saved time is replanned, filled with more tasks, or used as the basis for new targets. What was celebrated as an efficiency gain yesterday becomes the new normal tomorrow.

That is the productivity trap. Technological progress can genuinely make work easier. But under conditions where productivity is understood mainly as the ability to produce more with the same resources, relief quickly becomes intensified labor. The technology saves time, but workers do not get it back.

Luise Freese therefore does not only ask whether AI makes work more productive. She asks who actually controls the productivity that is created. Who decides whether it becomes higher profits, more output, fewer staff, shorter working hours, or better conditions? And why do we treat efficiency as if it were naturally a business gain, even though it rests on the labor and knowledge of workers?

The key question is not how many minutes an AI system can save, but who owns those minutes.