Since OpenAI unveiled the first public iteration of ChatGPT in November of 2023, the inevitability that LLMs and generative AI would make workers significantly more productive was unquestioned—at least in breathless articles and marketing collateral. While businesses have implemented generative AI tools and LLMs into their operations, most have been more measured. And, according to one early study, caution may be warranted.
The study, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, said gains are difficult to calculate in the broader labor market and have been small when they have been able to be measured. Researchers polled 25,000 workers in 7,000 workplaces in Denmark who used the technology and found they saved less than three percent of work time.
“Despite rapid adoption and substantial investments by both workers and firms, our key finding is that AI chatbots have had minimal impact on productivity and labor market outcomes to date,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, we find no evidence of differential trends over time, suggesting that the limited effects are not merely a very short-run phenomenon.”
Over time, however, the researchers said more optimism could be in order. Productivity of employees using AI chatbots is substantially higher when employers encourage usage, provide training, or deploy in-house models, according to the report. Also, they said, despite concerns that automating tasks will result in job loss, researchers found that AI chatbots have created new job tasks—extending even to workers who do not use the tools—signaling broader workplace transformations are coming.