AI study: Artificial intelligence does more than expected—and that’s precisely the problem
AI study: Artificial intelligence does more than expected—and that’s precisely the problem
Publish Date: 2026-01-18 00:00:00
Source Domain: www.igorslab.de
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Contradicting Popular Narrative: The study by Anthropic challenges the common belief that AI first takes over routine, easy tasks and later moves to complex tasks. Instead, AI is preferred for complex, cognitively demanding tasks.
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Time over Quality: Despite AI achieving a higher success rate in simple tasks, it is often used for complex tasks mainly due to significant time savings. Speed is prioritized over technical depth and sustainable competence development.
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Deskilling: There is a worrying trend of “deskilling” where core professional skills are gradually lost because they are outsourced to AI. This is evident in fields requiring judgment and technical depth such as technical editing and travel agency planning.
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Structural Risk: The issue is systemic rather than individual misconduct. Companies focus on speed, output, and scale, rewarding behavior that erodes long-term skills and makes errors in complex AI tasks harder to detect.
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Global Imbalance: The study highlights a geopolitical dimension where AI’s use is extensive in wealthy countries but limited in poorer countries, thereby reinforcing existing inequalities.
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Conclusion: The real concern is not whether AI will replace jobs, but the voluntary relinquishing of skills when speed and efficiency become the primary focus of human-AI collaboration.
