MIT Study: ChatGPT Boosts Human Worker Productivity

The big question with generative AI these days is whether tools like ChatGPT will widen the inequality gap or empower workers with new skills and abilities.

An investigation(opens in a new tab) from MIT’s Department of Economics, designed to answer this question, found that participants who used OpenAI’s ChatGPT increased productivity and increased the likelihood that they would use ChatGPT in future tasks. In the controlled study, this implies that “the technology will be more complementary to human employees,” meaning it favors tools like ChatGPT as a way to empower employees. But how these tools are actually implemented in the real world remains uncertain.

Unlike previous AI tools that raised concerns about automating “routine” tasks, deep learning tools like ChatGPT are capable of more complex, creative tasks like writing and design. How generative AI is implemented in the workforce can have a negative or positive impact on labor inequality. “Employee disparity may decrease if lower-skilled workers are more supported by ChatGPT, or increase if higher-skilled workers have the skills needed to take advantage of the new technology,” the study said.

The experiment included 453 highly trained professionals and randomly assigned half of the participants with ChatGPT after completing their first assignment. The assignments were writing-based tasks, including press releases, short reports, and “delicate emails,” mimicking the tasks writers, marketers, consultants, data analysts, and HR professionals would do in their day-to-day jobs.

The study found that the group that accessed ChatGPT took less time to complete a task by 11 minutes and increased in quality. In particular, the performance of the treatment group (those using ChatGPT) increased between their first assignment (without ChatGPT) and subsequent assignments (with ChatGPT), which the study believes could close the inequality gap between skilled and unskilled labor.

This is anecdotally true for anyone using ChatGPT. But the study provides hard evidence that employees armed with ChatGPT can be more productive and complete tasks better. But how this plays out in the real world remains to be seen. Is this proof that ChatGPT should be considered a new tool in employee toolkits? Or will companies interpret this as evidence that generative AI can successfully replace entire jobs? Ultimately, this study underlines how the implementation of generative AI depends on a hugely complex and unpredictable factor: human nature.