Alliance member Professor Tim Miller from The University of Queensland shares this opinion piece on the importance of adopting human-centered approaches that explicitly identify areas where AI tools can add real value, not just speed up dull, dirty and boring tasks.
“Integrating AI will help us to free ourselves from the dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks to focus on tasks that require creativity, complex problem-solving, and deeper engagement”
Most of us will have heard of a quote like the above, on the promise of AI in the Enterprise. Let’s assume for a second that contemporary AI tools do become good enough to free us from many of our dull tasks, a question remains: will it really allow us to focus on higher-level tasks?
I believe there are reasons to doubt that this will be the case, with the primary reason being the limits of human cognitive ability: we are just simply not wired to take advantage of this. As Professor Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at University of California, Irvine writes in her book Attention span: A groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity:
“We can’t meet the high mental challenge of being focused for long stretches throughout the day, just as we can’t be challenged to lift weights nonstop all day, without performance starting to degrade when we run out of energy (or cognitive resources). ….
Letting our minds wander while taking breaks with easy tasks, both online and in the physical world, helps us replenish our scarce cognitive resources, and with more resources, we are better able to focus and be productive”1
Cognitive depletion
What Professor Mark identifies here is cognitive depletion. Performance on cognitive tasks suffers when our workload exceeds the cognitive resources that we have available, which is estimated to be just 3-4 hours per day of sustained focus. As we spend more time on highly-demanding cognitive tasks, our vigilance declines. Throughout the day, we use several things to replenish these, such as taking breaks, playing games, or, yes, even doing dull and dirty tasks, such as checking email, admin tasks, filling out reports, cleaning the coffee machine, etc.
This indicates that, if we can semi-automate the dull tasks, we’ll have more time, but we won’t have the cognitive resources to do those higher-level tasks.
So, what will we do with our new-found time?
Some people, like me, might hope we would use this time for rest and relaxation, a much-needed break to offset cognitive depletion.
Recent data from ActivTrak2 shows that we may be seeing a paradox with AI tools and knowledge workers, with two of the main findings being particularly grim:
“Among AI users, time spent across every measured work category increased between 27% and 346% — with email up 104%, chat and messaging up 145% and business management up 94%”
“AI users’ daily focus time declined 9%, compared to virtually no change for non-users”
This means people using AI for automating dull, low-value tasks just do more dull, low-value tasks, and spend less time on focused work. This is the opposite of what we want.
How do we make sense of this? The Jevons Paradox, identified by economist Stanley Jevons in 1845, notes that, as the cost of doing some tasks decreases, the amount of resource (e.g. time) we spend increases. In the case of knowledge work, this points to a disturbing scenario: AI tools make dull tasks easier while not reducing their value to the business, so we can ‘produce more’ by doing more of these.
If Dull, Dirty, and Boring isn’t the answer, what is?
The failure of AI tools to save us from busywork signals a critical need to change the way we design enterprise technology.
We need to move away from seeing AI tools just as a way to speed up dull, dirty and boring work, and pivot to a vision where AI tools improve creative, complex and cognitively-demanding work too. If we want more high-value work done, we should exploit the Jevons Paradox by making that cognitively-demanding work easier, reducing friction and slowing down mental fatigue.
“A key focus of our research in the Australian Research Alliance for Enterprise AI: adopting human-centered approaches that explicitly identify areas where AI tools can add real value, not just speed up dull, dirty and boring tasks.” – Professor Tim Miller
References
[1] Mark, Gloria. Attention span: A groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity. Harlequin, 2023.
[2] ActivTrak Productivity Lab: AI Is Accelerating Work, Not Replacing It, March 2026. https://www.activtrak.com/news/state-of-the-workplace-ai-accelerating-work/
Tim Miller is the UQ-TIET Chair in Data Science and Professor of Artificial Intelligence at The University of Queensland. His research draws on machine learning, reinforcement learning, AI planning, interaction design, and cognitive science, to help people make better decisions. Tim’s expertise includes explainable AI, human-AI planning, & human-centred decision support.
