Op-Ed: AI Is Only Adding to Our 'Busywork'

Artificial intelligence may not be stealing your job, but it's quietly adding to your to-do list. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Oxford economist Carl Benedikt Frey argues that tools like ChatGPT are accelerating a long-running shift: Work once done by paid professionals is being pushed onto consumers as unpaid "self-service" labor. Frey has first-hand experience, setting up a rat trap in his garden with the help of AI rather than calling in a pro. (For the record, it didn't work.) "I know I'm not the only one who has recently become my own exterminator, repairman or accountant," he writes, citing stats showing how people are using AI tools.

Frey traces the pattern from the washing machine—which wiped out armies of laundresses but didn't erase the chore itself—to self-checkout, online travel booking, and app-based banking. AI, he writes, is now moving that same logic into expert realms like accounting, law, and even medicine. The problem is that "self-service does not automatically reproduce a professional's judgment"—users get "greater access, but thinner expertise." Because this extra effort happens at home and off the books, it doesn't show up in productivity stats, even as people feel more stretched. The AI wave, Frey concludes, "may not have taken your job yet. But it has already put you to work." Read the full essay, headlined, "This Is Why You're Drowning in Busywork."