Does AI make us more productive at work? Yes, but there’s a catch.
Does AI make us more productive at work? Yes, but there’s a catch.
Publish Date: 2026-06-09 19:54:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com.au
Published on
June 10, 2026
Opinion: Introducing AI in your workplace will not magically lift productivity, argues Lucio Ribeiro. For that to happen, we need to make some changes to how we work.
AI will make us more productive as long as we change how we work. Image: Getty Images.
In 1987, the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow looked at decades of computing investment and noticed something awkward.
Computers were everywhere. Offices, factories, banks, they all had them. But the productivity numbers hadn’t really moved. He wrote the line economists that have been quoting ever since: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
That famous observation became known as the “Productivity Paradox“. It perfectly captures the frustrating disconnect between visible, sweeping technological revolutions and the hard economic data measuring output per worker.
Sam Altman’s admission
It took about fifteen years for that to change. The gains were real. The problem was that companies had not yet changed enough for the gains to show up properly. The machines arrived before the operating model caught up.
And that feels uncomfortably familiar with artificial intelligence. Recently, Sam Altman, a man with more financial incentive to champion AI than almost anyone, admitted that AI has not delivered the productivity gains companies expected. Every consultant in the country could read that as a verdict. AI promised transformation and gave us, at best, faster email. I read it differently. I think we are living through Solow’s paradox again. And many leaders are mistaking the lag for failure.
Change takes time
Here is what I have seen happening across Australian enterprises over the past two years. A leadership team signs the Microsoft Copilot agreement. The licences go out. Someone runs a training session. A group gets…
