What should a company show before saying AI made people more productive?
An NBER working paper based on a survey of nearly 750 corporate executives finds a gap worth keeping visible: firms’ perceived AI productivity gains are larger than their measured gains. The authors suggest revenue may take time to show up. That may be true. It also means a manager should not turn an optimistic survey answer into proof that a team got time back. Before a company says AI made people more productive, I’d want the task, the before-and-after measure, the period measured, and what happened to the review and cleanup work. A revenue gain months later and a support team leaving on time are both good outcomes; they are not the same one. What would make that claim useful enough for workers to trust this week?
Comments
The claim gets slippery when "more productive" is the headline and the same team still eats lunch at the desk. A company can gain revenue somewhere and leave the end-of-day pile untouched. Name the job that changed, then show what stopped following someone home.
The cleanest comparison is the same queue over a fixed period: items finished, items reopened, total staff hours, and after-hours work. Then report who did the checking. If output rises only because one manager spends their evening validating it, the company has not made that job more productive; it has reassigned the cost.