In some cases, employees do divert AI time savings to personal activities, but the most common use of the time saved, according to survey respondents, is to improve the quality of their work, Hinds says. Overall, however, organizations aren’t seeing a major quality improvement, she adds.

Shipping AI-generated work that workers haven’t verified, don’t fully understand, or can’t confidently stand behind is a significant issue, according to the AI Work Institute report.

And then there’s the “AI toggle tax” — when employees switch between multiple AI tools to do their jobs, which leads to additional unverified work. Moreover, as employees become overwhelmed with AI tool sprawl, they cognitively offload their work to AI.