Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this edition…OpenAI wins a $200 million Pentagon contract…Salesforce finds AI models can’t use CRM software very well…and a new study shows how AI scrapers are overwhelming cultural institutions.
Back in April, Microsoft published some research about the modern workday, drawn from data it gathers anonymously about the use of its software applications. And honestly, the conclusions were kind of depressing. It found that we are all trapped in what the company is calling “the infinite workday.”
People start checking their emails before they even get out of bed. Then, when we are at work, the most productive hours of the day are filled with meetings and distractions. During core working hours, people are getting interrupted by messages or emails every two minutes on average—that’s 275 interruptions per day—Microsoft found. Nearly half of all meetings take place between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. or between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., which is exactly when neuroscientists say that most people’s brains are at their best for focused work and problem-solving. In fact, most people’s productive potential peaks at 11 a.m. but that’s exactly the most overloaded hour of the day, with chat traffic hitting its highest volume on average, as well as meetings and app usage spiking.
Things don’t get better in the evenings, either. For many employees, work peaks again after dinner. With teams working across time zones, the number of meetings taking place after 8 p.m. was up 16% year over year, according to Microsoft. Many people are still checking those emails as they crawl back into bed at 10 p.m.
This exhausting schedule has helped produce what Microsoft calls a “capacity gap”—53% of leaders say productivity must increase, but 80% of workers say they lack the time or energy to do their jobs.
