The promise of an AI-driven work utopia — where technology frees employees from routine tasks and gives them more time for creative thinking — isn’t materializing.

Instead, artificial intelligence appears to be making the modern workplace faster, busier and more demanding, The Wall Street Journal reports.

New research suggests AI is intensifying workloads rather than easing them. An analysis of 164,000 workers across 1,111 employers covering more than 440 million hours of work activity found the technology is increasing the pace and complexity of daily tasks.

AI adoption has surged quickly. About 80% of employees now use AI tools at work, up from 53% just two years ago, according to the analysis by workforce analytics firm ActivTrak.

But the shift hasn’t translated into lighter workloads. The study found 94% of AI users spent more time on email, messaging and chat applications, while activity in business-management software also climbed sharply.

At the same time, the amount of time workers spent on focused, uninterrupted work — deep concentration needed for tasks such as analysis, strategy or complex problem solving — fell 9%.

“It’s not that AI doesn’t create efficiency,” said Gabriela Mauch, ActivTrak’s chief customer officer and head of its productivity lab. “It’s that the capacity it frees up immediately gets repurposed into doing other work, and that’s where the creep is likely to happen.”

The findings run counter to predictions from many technology leaders who have suggested artificial intelligence could eventually shorten the workweek.

Instead, workers appear to be filling the time saved by AI with additional tasks.

“Workers often use the time savings to do more work rather than less because AI makes additional tasks feel easy and accessible, creating a sense of momentum,” said Aruna Ranganathan, an associate professor of management and organizations at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Ranganathan is leading an eight-month study examining how generative AI is shaping work habits inside a technology company with roughly 200 employees.

Early results show the tools are not reducing workloads but intensifying them.

Employees using AI worked faster, took on broader responsibilities, and often logged more hours, according to the preliminary research.

That pattern may boost short-term productivity but carries risks for companies, Ranganathan warned.

“Over time this can lead to cognitive overload, burnout, poorer decision-making and declining work quality, even if workers appear more productive in the short run,” she said.

Another surprising finding from the ActivTrak analysis: very few workers are using AI extensively enough to unlock its biggest productivity gains.

Employees who spent 7% to 10% of their work hours using AI tools showed the highest productivity, yet only about 3% of workers used AI that frequently. Most workers spent just 1% of their work time using the tools.

The implication, researchers say, is that AI’s biggest workplace impact may still be ahead. As workers become more comfortable with the technology—and use it more extensively—it could further accelerate the pace of work rather than slow it down.

For now, the dream of AI creating lighter workloads appears distant. Instead, the technology is reshaping the workplace into something faster, denser and potentially more exhausting than before.