What does this aictually change for me? ;)

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Work

AI that could change how people do their jobs, make decisions, build products, manage risk, or spend time and money.

The useful question

Does this help someone make a better decision, avoid waste, or do valuable work with less friction?

What we watch for

  • A real workflow rather than a polished demo
  • Time or money saved without hiding new costs
  • Clear accountability when the system is wrong
  • Evidence that workers benefit—not only the organization

Briefs in this topic

23 useful changes so far.

AI Solved More Developer Tasks.

In three randomized company experiments covering 4,867 software developers, access to an AI coding assistant increased completed tasks by an estimated 26.08%, with larger gains and higher adoption among less-experienced developers.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Oversize Shipping Boxes.

In a large-scale randomized Alibaba warehouse experiment, a human-centric packing algorithm cut switches to larger boxes on targeted packages from 29.5% to 23.8% and reduced average packing time by 4.5%.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Online Sales Chats.

In a peer-reviewed two-by-two randomized field experiment with 1,090 observations, giving human e-commerce sales agents AI augmentation increased sales by 5.46%, and the least-experienced agents benefited nearly six times as much.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Creative Teamwork.

In a randomized Pairit study of 2,234 participants producing 11,024 ads, human-AI teams created 50% more ads per worker and better text, but human-human teams chose better images, and those tradeoffs carried into a field test that generated more than 4.9 million impressions on X.

Promising evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Vending Overstock.

In a randomized field experiment involving 553 workers managing more than 59,000 smart vending machines and 4,000 SKUs, limiting downward overrides to two SKUs per machine cut inventory 1.28% without reducing sales, whereas unrestricted overrides cut inventory 1.95% but reduced sales 1.19%.

Promising evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Creative Block at Work.

In a randomized field experiment with 250 employees at a Chinese technology consulting firm, giving workers ChatGPT accounts raised supervisor-rated creativity by 0.84 points on a 1-to-5 scale and external-rater novelty by 0.25 points, but the gains were concentrated among employees with stronger metacognitive strategies.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Retail Demand Forecasts.

In a retail field experiment covering about 1,888 SKU forecasts, fully automated AI performed best for innovative products and short-term forecasts, but for established products over longer horizons, human augmentation cut forecast error from 1.59% to 0.78%.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Finding Taxi Riders.

In a peer-reviewed field study of a 29-day free trial among Yokohama taxi drivers, turning on a machine-learning route-suggestion tool cut customer-search time by about 5% overall and 7% for lower-skilled drivers, narrowing the productivity gap between high- and low-skilled drivers by 13.4%.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Dispatch Calls.

In a randomized field experiment on a large Chinese truck-sharing platform, adding human-like interjections and filler words to a voice dispatch chatbot increased driver response probability by more than 5.6%, lengthened calls by 24.9%, and raised order-acceptance intention by 10.1%, while upfront bot disclosure cut response probability by around 11%.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Peak-Power Bills.

In a multiphase study of large organizations in Ontario's critical-peak pricing program, neural-network demand forecasting plus planning-prompt curtailment emails reduced peak-hour energy use by 42.13% versus a self-managed baseline and produced average annual net savings of $232,843 per organization.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Shipping Code.

Across three randomized workplace experiments involving 4,867 developers at Microsoft, Accenture, and a Fortune 100 manufacturer, access to GitHub Copilot increased completed software tasks by an estimated 26.08% among users, with larger gains for newer and more junior developers.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Working Across Silos.

In a preregistered field experiment with 791 Procter & Gamble professionals tackling real product-development problems, GPT-4 raised solo workers' solution quality by about 0.37 standard deviations and helped them match the performance of two-person teams without AI.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Knowledge Work.

In a preregistered randomized experiment with 758 BCG consultants, GPT-4 made suitable business tasks more than 25% faster and 32% higher-quality, but cut correctness by 19 percentage points on a task built around a misleading data pattern.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved Making AI Fit the Worker.

In a 5.5-year field experiment with 72 pharmaceutical sales experts, tailoring work procedures, decision authority, training, and incentives to employees' cognitive styles increased daily meetings by more than 40%; an untailored rollout cut them by about 20%.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved How to Work With AI.

In a preregistered experiment with 269 workers, people who drafted first and used AI to edit felt as confident, connected, and purposeful as people who worked alone; copying AI output did not.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →

AI Solved City Traffic.

In a six-month experiment across 10 U.S. cities, changing route recommendations for fewer than 2% of observed Google Maps trips cut affected trips’ total travel time by a median 0.69%.

Strong evidenceSee what changed →