The academic community has long debated the impact AI will have on the future labor force. While some leading economists insist the technology will lead to mass job losses, others believe it will create new ones. But a recent working paper looks at the impact that the new tech might have on workers day-to-day and finds that while it could certainly enhance productivity, that could come at a cost. 

A doctoral student at MIT examined the impact of introducing an AI tool to 1,018 scientists working at a large U.S.-based research and development lab starting in May 2022. He found that the technology helped them make new discoveries and led to an 17% increase in new product creation amongst these workers. 

“Maybe the most exciting thing about AI is that it could accelerate scientific discovery and innovation,” researcher Aiden Toner-Rodgers told the Wall Street Journal. “This would be a huge benefit.”

But the AI also had other impacts. The tool, which helped generate various “recipes” for new chemical compounds, accounted for 57% of scientist’s “idea generation.” That means that a “key, creative part of the process was automated,” Toner-Rodgers said. 

Overall, the scientists’ main job shifted away from their own original thinking, to evaluating AI-driven ideas, many of which didn’t work out in the long run. That also affected worker happiness: 82% of those who used the tool reported reduced job satisfaction, the study concluded. 

“I couldn’t help feeling that much of my education is now worthless,” one of the scientists who took part in the study told the Wall Street Journal. 

To be sure, this is only one study, and the AI revolution is still in its early days, but it does serve as a potential warning to employers about the kind of drawbacks that come with this technology as they roll it out among their workforce. And it could drastically change how people feel about the future of their chosen professions.

Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com

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Around the Table

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