AI productivity gains bottlenecked by legacy organizational structures

emollick · x · 2026-07-31

Professor Ethan Mollick points out that when workers gain productivity from AI, the rest of the bottlenecks in the system can eat up any gain. This is a legacy consequence of current organizations being built entirely around the limits and advantages of human intelligence.

He adds that organizations are built around an expected range of human productivity. If AI generates way too much output, it can be as bad as too little, since current approvals, staffing models, and coordination systems cannot properly absorb the massive workload.

Related event: Traditional Organizational Structures Bottleneck AI Productivity(2 posts)→

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