AI Productivity Paradox: Consulting & Tools for Real Business Value

Origin Reddit Post

r/technology

Yahoo Japan forces all employees to use AI, expects it will double productivity by 2028 | Despite the hype, many studies suggest AI may lower productivity

Posted by u/chrisdh79•07/21/2025

Top Comments

u/Eorily

I'm surprised there is a Yahoo Japan.

u/ArtMustBeFree

Everyone thinks they're smart enough to know whether or not to double check something. If you double check everything, congrats AI is an extra step in a research process that has existed for

u/WraithArt

I really don't understand why you're so aggressive over a respectful conversation.

u/chucchinchilla

Our company started using CoPilot and yes productivity is up because it eliminates a lot of admin time since it has access to internal docs. “What is our travel policy?” Was a simple one I as

u/TonySu

AI rage-porn copium-bait is such a hot trend in reporting right now. This article completely ignores that there are many studies that show AI improving productivity. Take the second source fo

u/Rahbek23

I mean, I think it will eventually increase efficiency as the tools improve and people get better at using them when applicable. Those studies (well at least the recent open source contributo

u/chucchinchilla

I use it for all sorts of things beyond search, just gave one random example from Friday.

u/WoollyMittens

Dunning-Kruger comes to mind.

u/Eastern_Interest_908

Yawho?

u/albertexye

I’m not in favor of AI replacing human positions, but I just want to point out that the more companies adapt to the AI workflow, the faster the AI companies and the companies that use AI will

u/bozho

Double the productivity, double the wages, right? RIGHT?

u/Top_Effect_5109

AI is going to lower productivity until it raises productivity. In my experience 50% of bosses dont even understand when there is a new hire you are removing a productive employee to train a

u/Junjo_O

I laugh at all this talk of increasing productivity because I just know wages will remain stagnant

u/Eastern_Interest_908

Yawho?

u/lolexecs

>executives latching on to a concept The phrase I've been hearing recently is "AI Washing," everyone seems to have been told that they need to contextualize what they do in terms of AI. I

u/fightstreeter

We gotta burn a gallon of water because your intranet doesn't have a fucking search feature.

u/WraithArt

And you know this because you're currently living in an East Asian country right?

u/blazedjake

this is how you get reddit to hate Japan

u/cbih

If only AI could do labor organizing

u/postALEXpress

AI is so huge in East Asia I don't think Americans understand. It does not have the stigma it has in the west. It is embraced by nearly all facets of life . Just insane how different the nar

u/Efficient_Reading360

There are many studies that show the opposite. Take [this one from IBM](https://www.cio.com/article/3996256/what-roi-ai-misfires-spur-ceos-to-rethink-adoption.html). “Just 25% of AI initia

u/postALEXpress

I see a lot of discourse in my sector in regards to disliking it, and most of my colleagues are not on reddit. Their discourse in the US, that doesn't revolve around the reddit echo chamber,

u/cbih

Has anyone found AI useful at work beyond it being a search engine or writing bullshit?

u/SidewaysFancyPrance

That's just replacing/updating search, it's not generating any new output. I don't consider that using AI, personally.

u/chucchinchilla

Then we're all out of jobs, but in the meantime GenAI powered tools aren't going away. Pretending they don't exist will just leave you further behind as they become the new standard. It'll be

u/FriarNurgle

I don’t even trust AI meeting minutes.

u/_ECMO_

Everyone was talking nonstop about METR when they showed the graph about specific AI capabilities doubling in 4 months. But now, they are suddenly a one free study link on par with anti-vaxx

u/iblastoff

who said it was going away? your example though has nothing to do with GenAI. you literally are just describing a basic search engine function.

u/Particular-Break-205

Then the fallout due to crappy output which leads to reputation damage, layoffs and lower stock price. But hey, the execs got their piece already

u/JMEEKER86

Sir, this is /r/technology, a subreddit for Luddites. You can't just call people out for mindlessly hating things that they don't understand. That's considered very rude.

u/postALEXpress

Japan specifically, but yeah. Spend most of my year between Hawaii and Japan for work.

u/Tucancancan

Yahoo Japan is comically shitty. At least their ad tech is. I had the unpleasant experience of using their APIs for a job once and they were extremely dated and the platform was unreliable. G

u/WrongdoerIll5187

Nah agents are the way, at least for programmers.

u/rumblegod

The AI hype is real. It is useful lol. The people just don’t think to use it the right way. It depends on your job of course but no, legitimately ask ChatGPT how to use it in your job. Give

u/WraithArt

Salty? Where? Also who called me out?

u/Eastern_Interest_908

Yawho?

u/Nik_Tesla

I mean, better to force all employees to use AI in order to increase productivity, than to remove employees to replace them with AI for cost savings.

u/chucchinchilla

Our company started using CoPilot and yes productivity is up because it eliminates a lot of admin time since it has access to internal docs. “What is our travel policy?” Was a simple one I as

u/rumblegod

The AI hype is real. It is useful lol. The people just don’t think to use it the right way. It depends on your job of course but no, legitimately ask ChatGPT how to use it in your job. Give

u/quetzalcoatlus1453

If my employer forced me to “use AI”, I’d give them what they asked for, results be damned.

u/Particular-Break-205

Then the fallout due to crappy output which leads to reputation damage, layoffs and lower stock price. But hey, the execs got their piece already

u/postALEXpress

Japan specifically, but yeah. Spend most of my year between Hawaii and Japan for work.

u/KarmaFarmaLlama1

by many studies, they mean a few studies

u/tsukinoki

Except not really. My job has started to try to bring agentic programming in to speed up devs...and it's not doing much (using a few models, including github copilot among others). Very few

u/Dismal_Struggle_9004

AI lowers productivity? I’d be surprised if this was actually the case. I understand the stigma with AI but one of the reasons it’s so popular is how quickly it can push code for example whet

u/savetinymita

First initiative, teach AI how to use the fax machine.

u/WraithArt

So you get to travel, really Cool. Well the narratives are probably so different because on this side of the world Tech CEO's and gurus keep bashing the average citizens in the head with how

u/postALEXpress

AI is so huge in East Asia I don't think Americans understand. It does not have the stigma it has in the west. It is embraced by nearly all facets of life . Just insane how different the nar

u/Civil_Pain_453

AI makes people stupid as they stop thinking themselves

u/Eorily

Wait, is Compuserve Japan a thing?

u/withwhichwhat

It's the same problem as aways dealing with MBAs... they are unfamiliar with the work they want to manage, and they don't know the difference between talking about work and working. So to the

u/WrongdoerIll5187

You’re either using the wrong models, or, and this is what it sounds like, not very good at providing prompts and context. I’ve been using it to great effect in complicated code bases using c

u/savetinymita

First initiative, teach AI how to use the fax machine.

u/fightstreeter

We gotta burn a gallon of water because your intranet doesn't have a fucking search feature.

u/CommonMobile7973

I’m gonna blow your mind, EarthLink is still a thing.

u/Expensive_Finger_973

The easy and petty answer here is fully embrace AI as they require, but make sure it does not in fact double productivity. Few things are as entertaining in a corporate setting than watching

u/electric_nikki

Man I can’t wait for a bunch of businesses to fail because of their misplaced belief in AI

u/Thund3rF000t

To do what for Yahoo have more trash articles and useless crap that they publish?

u/savetinymita

First initiative, teach AI how to use the fax machine.

u/Seastep

Right. You ain't seen a price squeeze like the one OpenAI is gonna put on.

u/electric_nikki

Man I can’t wait for a bunch of businesses to fail because of their misplaced belief in AI

u/raynorelyp

To be fair, AI is currently heavily subsidized by investors. When their prices increase 10x we’ll see if they’re still on board

u/albertexye

I’m not in favor of AI replacing human positions, but I just want to point out that the more companies adapt to the AI workflow, the faster the AI companies and the companies that use AI will

u/Tucancancan

Yahoo Japan is comically shitty. At least their ad tech is. I had the unpleasant experience of using their APIs for a job once and they were extremely dated and the platform was unreliable. G

u/cbih

Has anyone found AI useful at work beyond it being a search engine or writing bullshit?

u/BoredGuy_v2

Is that yahoo's come back strategy?

u/WrongdoerIll5187

You’re either using the wrong models, or, and this is what it sounds like, not very good at providing prompts and context. I’ve been using it to great effect in complicated code bases using c

u/FernandoMM1220

they were already doing that before ai?

u/Junjo_O

I laugh at all this talk of increasing productivity because I just know wages will remain stagnant

u/Junjo_O

I laugh at all this talk of increasing productivity because I just know wages will remain stagnant

u/strangescript

Leveraging AI well is an under appreciated skill from what I have seen. Even simple stuff like people only having one Claude Code going at a time or understanding why their prompts are confus

u/bozho

Double the productivity, double the wages, right? RIGHT?

u/cbih

If only AI could do labor organizing

u/The_All-Range_Atomic

Therein lies the problem. Companies will inadvertently create an absolute disaster and we will soon see a "AI Validation Engineer" position down the road. They will be tasked with cleaning up

u/Howdyini

This dumb moment is so ripe for labor organization my god if only

u/The_All-Range_Atomic

I find Claude is pretty good for learning code, especially since it is pretty easy to validate for correctness. Claude in particular doesn't seem to suffer from hallucinating imaginary node p

u/raynorelyp

To be fair, AI is currently heavily subsidized by investors. When their prices increase 10x we’ll see if they’re still on board

u/quetzalcoatlus1453

If my employer forced me to “use AI”, I’d give them what they asked for, results be damned.

u/Civil_Pain_453

AI makes people stupid as they stop thinking themselves

u/fightstreeter

With no time crunch to come up with a cool example, or even really a need to tell the truth (we're all strangers here) the only thing you came up with was "google search with more steps". It

u/electric_nikki

Man I can’t wait for a bunch of businesses to fail because of their misplaced belief in AI

u/The_All-Range_Atomic

Therein lies the problem. Companies will inadvertently create an absolute disaster and we will soon see a "AI Validation Engineer" position down the road. They will be tasked with cleaning up

u/Rahbek23

I mean, I think it will eventually increase efficiency as the tools improve and people get better at using them when applicable. Those studies (well at least the recent open source contributo

u/itwillmakesenselater

MBAs will never believe AI is a flawed tool until they lose their own money due to its use. They still hang on to "multi-tasking" as a good thing, too.

u/MRSN4P

I bet someone has done a study on this.

u/lolexecs

>executives latching on to a concept The phrase I've been hearing recently is "AI Washing," everyone seems to have been told that they need to contextualize what they do in terms of AI. I

u/c_1_r_c_l_3_s

Ask AI to write a bash script that calls your python script 🤣

u/blazedjake

this is how you get reddit to hate Japan

u/JAlfredJR

I'm sure you're just kidding but it is making jobs harder—not easier. Cleaning up after AI is much more infuriating than mopping up a human's shortcomings. Hey, at least we all have a mutual

u/WraithArt

And you know this because you're currently living in an East Asian country right?

u/sdric

I am working in (IT) Audit. We have a VERY low level of error tolerance. Yet, we are constantly being pushed by our mother company to use more AI, which produces one inaccuracy after another.

u/Seastep

Right. You ain't seen a price squeeze like the one OpenAI is gonna put on.

u/ArtMustBeFree

Everyone thinks they're smart enough to know whether or not to double check something. If you double check everything, congrats AI is an extra step in a research process that has existed for

u/Expensive_Finger_973

The easy and petty answer here is fully embrace AI as they require, but make sure it does not in fact double productivity. Few things are as entertaining in a corporate setting than watching

u/WraithArt

And you know this because you're currently living in an East Asian country right?

u/itwillmakesenselater

MBAs will never believe AI is a flawed tool until they lose their own money due to its use. They still hang on to "multi-tasking" as a good thing, too.

u/gart888

AI increases productivity at completing tasks you’re not qualified to do. It doesn’t increase productivity for things you’re already familiar with and good at. This is a dangerous path.

u/RecordRich777

And when AI messes everything up they will blame the employees so they can fire them

u/mcs5280

Lowers productivity but raises stock price

u/albertexye

I’m not in favor of AI replacing human positions, but I just want to point out that the more companies adapt to the AI workflow, the faster the AI companies and the companies that use AI will

u/Oli_Picard

Microsoft CoPilot is a lying, pile of hot steaming garbage. Recently I had to deduplicate some CSV data using the work “approved” copilot. Data went missing, my trusty python script retained

u/_ECMO_

Everyone was talking nonstop about METR when they showed the graph about specific AI capabilities doubling in 4 months. But now, they are suddenly a one free study link on par with anti-vaxx

u/eezeehee

It absolutely does, they keep asking us to use AI for our daily tasks...its just not working..I'm spending more time figuring out a prompt, and cleaning up data for the chat bot to read corre

u/CommonMobile7973

I’m gonna blow your mind, EarthLink is still a thing.

u/JMEEKER86

It barely has a stigma in the US outside of echo chambers (like here). The overwhelming majority love it.

u/ten_year_rebound

This is such a salty response to getting called out

u/Efficient_Reading360

You’re drawing a long bow between “1 in 4 meeting ROI expectations” and “the technology works”. It might be true that it works to an acceptable level in some applications, but it’s not the ma

u/_ECMO_

“77% of C-suite leaders say they’ve observed measurable productivity gains across their teams.” Why is it always C-suites who are being asked?? That’s just so laughably stupid. They know abs

u/Expensive_Finger_973

The easy and petty answer here is fully embrace AI as they require, but make sure it does not in fact double productivity. Few things are as entertaining in a corporate setting than watching

u/TonySu

AI rage-porn copium-bait is such a hot trend in reporting right now. This article completely ignores that there are many studies that show AI improving productivity. Take the second source fo

u/quetzalcoatlus1453

If my employer forced me to “use AI”, I’d give them what they asked for, results be damned.

u/JAlfredJR

I'm sure you're just kidding but it is making jobs harder—not easier. Cleaning up after AI is much more infuriating than mopping up a human's shortcomings. Hey, at least we all have a mutual

u/f8Negative

There's gonna be 1 person with 20 jobs who literally fixes all the AI crap and then gets fired.

u/Techwield

Garbage, lmao. Take your L and go. Pathetic

u/Nik_Tesla

I mean, better to force all employees to use AI in order to increase productivity, than to remove employees to replace them with AI for cost savings.

u/goldfaux

I use it sometimes for certain tasks. It probably saves me about 5% of my time total. But Ive also spent a considerable amount of time learning what works and what doesnt

u/lab-gone-wrong

Don't worry, Reddit has read the headline of one article about one study that said AI lowers productivity and figured everything out. We've all "done our own research" and know this tech is a

u/iblastoff

so if AI can just do your task, whats the point of you.

u/raynorelyp

To be fair, AI is currently heavily subsidized by investors. When their prices increase 10x we’ll see if they’re still on board

u/Rahbek23

I mean, I think it will eventually increase efficiency as the tools improve and people get better at using them when applicable. Those studies (well at least the recent open source contributo

u/CommonMobile7973

AOL Japan is next door.

u/JMEEKER86

It barely has a stigma in the US outside of echo chambers (like here). The overwhelming majority love it.

u/FernandoMM1220

so the majority of studies are saying the opposite

u/DizzyBlackberry3999

Why do something right once when you can do it wrong and then fix it?

u/Eorily

I'm surprised there is a Yahoo Japan.

u/grain_farmer

Not typical to take things out on the ‘[Genba](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba)’ in Japan for leadership mistakes compared to western companies

u/snowsuit101

It won't double it but as long as they use it for what it's good for, it can increase productivity. Especially for designers it can speed up the process of drafting things up or do small chan

u/lab-gone-wrong

Don't worry, Reddit has read the headline of one article about one study that said AI lowers productivity and figured everything out. We've all "done our own research" and know this tech is a

u/eezeehee

It absolutely does, they keep asking us to use AI for our daily tasks...its just not working..I'm spending more time figuring out a prompt, and cleaning up data for the chat bot to read corre

u/WoollyMittens

Dunning-Kruger comes to mind.

u/winkingchef

And I certainly don’t trust any org with “Yahoo” and “Japan” in the name with making correct choices on future technologies

u/BoredGuy_v2

Is that yahoo's come back strategy?

u/iblastoff

who said it was going away? your example though has nothing to do with GenAI. you literally are just describing a basic search engine function.

u/chucchinchilla

Then we're all out of jobs, but in the meantime GenAI powered tools aren't going away. Pretending they don't exist will just leave you further behind as they become the new standard. It'll be

u/Civil_Pain_453

AI makes people stupid as they stop thinking themselves

u/tsukinoki

Except not really. My job has started to try to bring agentic programming in to speed up devs...and it's not doing much (using a few models, including github copilot among others). Very few

u/The_All-Range_Atomic

I find Claude is pretty good for learning code, especially since it is pretty easy to validate for correctness. Claude in particular doesn't seem to suffer from hallucinating imaginary node p

u/Particular-Break-205

Then the fallout due to crappy output which leads to reputation damage, layoffs and lower stock price. But hey, the execs got their piece already

u/Efficient_Reading360

u/withwhichwhat

It's the same problem as aways dealing with MBAs... they are unfamiliar with the work they want to manage, and they don't know the difference between talking about work and working. So to the

u/snowsuit101

It won't double it but as long as they use it for what it's good for, it can increase productivity. Especially for designers it can speed up the process of drafting things up or do small chan

u/Thund3rF000t

To do what for Yahoo have more trash articles and useless crap that they publish?

u/chalbersma

LLMs are pretty good at reviewing text for tone, grammar, voice and the like. It's like a souped up spellchecker.

u/grain_farmer

Not typical to take things out on the ‘[Genba](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba)’ in Japan for leadership mistakes compared to western companies

u/chucchinchilla

Our company started using CoPilot and yes productivity is up because it eliminates a lot of admin time since it has access to internal docs. “What is our travel policy?” Was a simple one I as

u/acideater

The problem is not that it is right or doesn't work. It's when you rely on AI that will make things up and get the context wrong for a situation. I use AI and it gets things write or close

u/withwhichwhat

It's the same problem as aways dealing with MBAs... they are unfamiliar with the work they want to manage, and they don't know the difference between talking about work and working. So to the

u/lolexecs

>executives latching on to a concept The phrase I've been hearing recently is "AI Washing," everyone seems to have been told that they need to contextualize what they do in terms of AI. I

u/postALEXpress

Japan specifically, but yeah. Spend most of my year between Hawaii and Japan for work.

u/KarmaFarmaLlama1

by many studies, they mean a few studies

u/RecordRich777

And when AI messes everything up they will blame the employees so they can fire them

u/WraithArt

So you get to travel, really Cool. Well the narratives are probably so different because on this side of the world Tech CEO's and gurus keep bashing the average citizens in the head with how

u/acideater

The problem is not that it is right or doesn't work. It's when you rely on AI that will make things up and get the context wrong for a situation. I use AI and it gets things write or close

u/mcs5280

Lowers productivity but raises stock price

u/CommonMobile7973

AOL Japan is next door.

u/TonySu

That doesn't mean what you think it means. If 1 in 4 AI initiatives are meeting ROI expectations, then the tech clearly works and people are going to need to figure out what the top performer

u/postALEXpress

I see a lot of discourse in my sector in regards to disliking it, and most of my colleagues are not on reddit. Their discourse in the US, that doesn't revolve around the reddit echo chamber,

u/SidewaysFancyPrance

That's just replacing/updating search, it's not generating any new output. I don't consider that using AI, personally.

u/JMEEKER86

Sir, this is /r/technology, a subreddit for Luddites. You can't just call people out for mindlessly hating things that they don't understand. That's considered very rude.

u/postALEXpress

AI is so huge in East Asia I don't think Americans understand. It does not have the stigma it has in the west. It is embraced by nearly all facets of life . Just insane how different the nar

u/mcs5280

Lowers productivity but raises stock price

u/agha0013

executives latching on to a concept they don't understand and don't use but want their employees to use because they got caught up in the hype.... and when that productivity doesn't come th

u/chalbersma

LLMs are pretty good at reviewing text for tone, grammar, voice and the like. It's like a souped up spellchecker.

u/RecordRich777

And when AI messes everything up they will blame the employees so they can fire them

u/FernandoMM1220

so the majority of studies are saying the opposite

u/chucchinchilla

I use it for all sorts of things beyond search, just gave one random example from Friday.

u/fightstreeter

With no time crunch to come up with a cool example, or even really a need to tell the truth (we're all strangers here) the only thing you came up with was "google search with more steps". It

u/agha0013

executives latching on to a concept they don't understand and don't use but want their employees to use because they got caught up in the hype.... and when that productivity doesn't come th

u/Dismal_Struggle_9004

AI lowers productivity? I’d be surprised if this was actually the case. I understand the stigma with AI but one of the reasons it’s so popular is how quickly it can push code for example whet

u/Oli_Picard

Microsoft CoPilot is a lying, pile of hot steaming garbage. Recently I had to deduplicate some CSV data using the work “approved” copilot. Data went missing, my trusty python script retained

u/DizzyBlackberry3999

Why do something right once when you can do it wrong and then fix it?

u/iblastoff

so if AI can just do your task, whats the point of you.

u/strangescript

Leveraging AI well is an under appreciated skill from what I have seen. Even simple stuff like people only having one Claude Code going at a time or understanding why their prompts are confus

u/FriarNurgle

I don’t even trust AI meeting minutes.

u/WrongdoerIll5187

Nah agents are the way, at least for programmers.

u/_ECMO_

“77% of C-suite leaders say they’ve observed measurable productivity gains across their teams.” Why is it always C-suites who are being asked?? That’s just so laughably stupid. They know abs

u/FriarNurgle

I don’t even trust AI meeting minutes.

u/c_1_r_c_l_3_s

Ask AI to write a bash script that calls your python script 🤣

u/strangescript

Leveraging AI well is an under appreciated skill from what I have seen. Even simple stuff like people only having one Claude Code going at a time or understanding why their prompts are confus

u/Efficient_Reading360

There are many studies that show the opposite. Take [this one from IBM](https://www.cio.com/article/3996256/what-roi-ai-misfires-spur-ceos-to-rethink-adoption.html). “Just 25% of AI initia

u/Howdyini

This dumb moment is so ripe for labor organization my god if only

u/ten_year_rebound

This is such a salty response to getting called out

u/FernandoMM1220

they were already doing that before ai?

u/Top_Effect_5109

AI is going to lower productivity until it raises productivity. In my experience 50% of bosses dont even understand when there is a new hire you are removing a productive employee to train a

u/Techwield

Garbage, lmao. Take your L and go. Pathetic

u/agha0013

executives latching on to a concept they don't understand and don't use but want their employees to use because they got caught up in the hype.... and when that productivity doesn't come th

u/rumblegod

The AI hype is real. It is useful lol. The people just don’t think to use it the right way. It depends on your job of course but no, legitimately ask ChatGPT how to use it in your job. Give

u/gart888

AI increases productivity at completing tasks you’re not qualified to do. It doesn’t increase productivity for things you’re already familiar with and good at. This is a dangerous path.

u/itwillmakesenselater

MBAs will never believe AI is a flawed tool until they lose their own money due to its use. They still hang on to "multi-tasking" as a good thing, too.

u/Tucancancan

Yahoo Japan is comically shitty. At least their ad tech is. I had the unpleasant experience of using their APIs for a job once and they were extremely dated and the platform was unreliable. G

u/MRSN4P

I bet someone has done a study on this.

u/WrongdoerIll5187

Nah agents are the way, at least for programmers.

u/winkingchef

And I certainly don’t trust any org with “Yahoo” and “Japan” in the name with making correct choices on future technologies

u/snowsuit101

It won't double it but as long as they use it for what it's good for, it can increase productivity. Especially for designers it can speed up the process of drafting things up or do small chan

u/goldfaux

I use it sometimes for certain tasks. It probably saves me about 5% of my time total. But Ive also spent a considerable amount of time learning what works and what doesnt

u/Eorily

Wait, is Compuserve Japan a thing?

u/TonySu

That doesn't mean what you think it means. If 1 in 4 AI initiatives are meeting ROI expectations, then the tech clearly works and people are going to need to figure out what the top performer

u/BoredGuy_v2

Is that yahoo's come back strategy?

Origin Reddit Post

r/technology

Yahoo Japan forces all employees to use AI, expects it will double productivity by 2028 | Despite the hype, many studies suggest AI may lower productivity

Top Comments

Ask AI About This

Create Your Own