Why AI Might Make You Busier, Not Less Busy

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-30

There's a popular image of the future where AI handles all the tedious stuff, and we humans get to kick back, sip coffee, and maybe take up painting. It sounds nice, doesn't it? But an Oxford professor named Carl Benedikt Frey is poking a hole in that dream. He's warning that AI could actually make us busier than ever before. It's a counterintuitive idea, but when you start to unpack it, the logic gets pretty uncomfortable. Frey, who works at the Oxford Martin School, isn't some tech pessimist shouting into the void. He's a serious researcher who has spent years studying how technology changes the way we work. His argument isn't that AI is bad. It's that we might be misreading what it will do to our daily grind. Instead of giving us back our time, it could be quietly loading more onto our plates. ### The Paradox of Productivity Here's the core of Frey's argument: AI is great at doing tasks, but it's not great at doing jobs. A job is a bundle of many different tasks, and AI tends to automate the easy, repeatable ones. That leaves the messy, complicated, and unpredictable parts for you. So, instead of replacing your job, AI might just strip away the boring bits and leave you with a bigger pile of the hard stuff. Think about it like this. In the past, you might have spent a few hours a day on data entry, which gave your brain a bit of a rest. Now, an AI tool does that in seconds. Great, right? Well, that means you now have those extra hours to spend on high-stakes client calls, complex problem-solving, and strategic planning. That's not a break. That's a promotion in workload without a promotion in title. ### The 'Busy Work' Trap There's another layer to this too. As AI gets better at producing content, emails, reports, and presentations, the expectation of output goes up. If everyone can generate a 20-page report in minutes, then you're expected to deliver 20-page reports regularly. The bar for what counts as a good day's work keeps rising. You end up running faster just to stay in the same place. - **Email overload:** AI drafts replies, so you get more emails, and you're expected to answer them all. - **Meeting mania:** AI summarizes meetings, so you get more meetings, and you're expected to attend them all. - **Creative pressure:** AI generates ideas, so you're expected to review, refine, and polish a never-ending stream of concepts. It's a strange loop. We built these tools to save time, but they might just create more demand for our time. As Frey suggests, we might be entering an era where the bottleneck isn't the work itself, but our own human capacity to keep up with it. ### What This Means for You If this sounds a bit bleak, don't panic just yet. The point isn't to fear AI, but to be smart about how you use it. The goal should be to use AI to genuinely offload work, not just to do more work in the same amount of time. That means being intentional about setting boundaries and defining what 'done' looks like. > "The danger is that we use AI to amplify our existing habits, rather than to rethink them." If you're in a role where you're feeling the squeeze, it's worth asking yourself a few questions. Are you using AI to finish earlier, or are you using it to take on more? Are you letting the tool set your pace, or are you setting the pace for the tool? The answer will determine whether AI becomes your liberator or your taskmaster. ### The Bottom Line The future of work isn't written in stone. AI is a tool, and like any tool, its impact depends on how we wield it. Frey's warning is a useful reality check. It reminds us that technology doesn't automatically bring leisure. It brings change. And how that change feels depends a lot on the choices we make today, not just the code we write tomorrow. So, the next time you hear about AI saving us all from the daily grind, maybe ask yourself: whose grind is it saving, and what's it putting on my plate instead?