Business · 2026-11-04

Why people who use AI at work often work longer days

An ActivTrak study found that people who actively use AI work up to 90 minutes more per day than those who don't.

✨ What the study found

Employees who use AI at work spend on average between 8.4 and 9.1 hours a day on tasks. Those who don't use such tools work on average 7.6 hours. That means the gap can reach 90 minutes.

The data comes from ActivTrak, a company that makes software for measuring work productivity. They analyzed the digital activity of more than 9,000 employees at 467 companies from April to September 2026.

📌 Who feels the difference most

The biggest gap shows up among active users. ActivTrak defines them as people who use AI for more than 45 minutes across at least five sessions a day. These users also work on average 18 minutes longer after the workday ends than those who don't use AI.

Active users also switch between apps more often and have shorter periods of focused work.

🔹 Why this happens

Researchers offer several explanations. People who already worked longer may have started using AI more eagerly. Another possibility is that AI really encourages people to take on more tasks. Some of the extra time may go to checking and fixing results generated by AI.

The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, reached similar conclusions. In its eight-month ethnographic study at a tech company with about 200 staff, AI did not free up time. People worked faster, took on a wider range of tasks, and extended their workday, often without direct pressure from management.

One of the study's authors, Sinchi Maggie Ye, warned that this pattern may not be sustainable in the long run. As the number of tasks and parallel AI processes grows, work becomes more intense and cognitively demanding. Extra workload that people first take on voluntarily may eventually become the new norm.

Sources: 🔗 DOU/dev.ua