Shifting Work Patterns with Generative AI

Abstract

We present evidence from a field experiment across 66 firms and 7,137 knowledge workers. Workers were randomly selected to access a generative AI tool integrated into applications they already used at work for email, meetings, and writing. In the second half of the 6-month experiment, the 80% of treated workers who used this tool spent two fewer hours on email each week and reduced their time working outside of regular hours. Apart from these individual time savings, we do not detect shifts in the quantity or composition of workers' tasks resulting from individual-level AI provision.