Posted by Imad on June 13, 2026, 4:30 pm
AI Isn't Here to Replace You It Might Just Make You Better at Your Job
We hear it constantly: AI is coming for our jobs. So when I stumbled on a study that actually measured what happens when real employees start using AI at work, I had to dig in. The results surprised me and they paint a far more hopeful picture than the headlines do. The study, Generative AI at Work by Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond (2025), followed 5,172 customer support agents at a Fortune 500 company.
Each agent got access to an AI assistant that offered real-time suggestions, recommended responses, and pulled up relevant documentation while they helped customers. The question the researchers wanted to answer was simple: does AI actually make people better at their jobs? The short answer is yes. On average, agents resolved about 15 percent more customer issues per hour once they had AI in their corner.
They handled conversations faster and juggled more of them at once. But here's the part that really stuck with me: the biggest gains didn't go to the top performers they went to the newest and least experienced workers. Some of them became up to 30 percent more productive. The AI was essentially bottling up the instincts of the company's best employees and handing them to everyone else, helping rookies perform like veterans in a fraction of the usual time. And no, the AI didn't replace anyone. People stayed in charge of every customer conversation and decided for themselves whether to use the suggestions.
Even better, they were learning from it: when the tool was temporarily switched off, the employees who'd been using it kept performing well. The knowledge had stuck. Customers were happier too fewer of them asked to escalate to a supervisor, and employee turnover dropped.
This is exactly the kind of evidence I find encouraging. AI here wasn't a threat it was a coach. It made work more efficient, helped people grow their skills faster, and supported employees instead of sidelining them. If this is what AI in the workplace can look like, I'm a lot more optimistic about where we're headed.
Source: Brynjolfsson, E., Li, D., & Raymond, L. (2025). Generative AI at Work. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Each agent got access to an AI assistant that offered real-time suggestions, recommended responses, and pulled up relevant documentation while they helped customers. The question the researchers wanted to answer was simple: does AI actually make people better at their jobs? The short answer is yes. On average, agents resolved about 15 percent more customer issues per hour once they had AI in their corner.
They handled conversations faster and juggled more of them at once. But here's the part that really stuck with me: the biggest gains didn't go to the top performers they went to the newest and least experienced workers. Some of them became up to 30 percent more productive. The AI was essentially bottling up the instincts of the company's best employees and handing them to everyone else, helping rookies perform like veterans in a fraction of the usual time. And no, the AI didn't replace anyone. People stayed in charge of every customer conversation and decided for themselves whether to use the suggestions.
Even better, they were learning from it: when the tool was temporarily switched off, the employees who'd been using it kept performing well. The knowledge had stuck. Customers were happier too fewer of them asked to escalate to a supervisor, and employee turnover dropped.
This is exactly the kind of evidence I find encouraging. AI here wasn't a threat it was a coach. It made work more efficient, helped people grow their skills faster, and supported employees instead of sidelining them. If this is what AI in the workplace can look like, I'm a lot more optimistic about where we're headed.
Source: Brynjolfsson, E., Li, D., & Raymond, L. (2025). Generative AI at Work. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
