Study Finds AI Saves Effort, Not Time
rohanpaul_ai · x · 2026-07-05
A study involving 1,237 participants conducted jointly by MIT, Stanford, NYU, and Princeton found that while people expected AI to save time on simple tasks, it primarily saves "effort" rather than time. Participants anticipated AI would save about 69 seconds per task, but actual overall completion times did not significantly decrease. Researchers attribute this to an "illusion of speed": people can accurately estimate their own completion time, but severely underestimate the time required when using AI assistance. AI proved genuinely helpful for harder tasks like summarizing long texts and editing, but offered little help with simple tasks.
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