Harvard Business School has just delivered the most pivotal working paper to date on the impact of AI on knowledge worker productivity and quality. In a nutshell, a team of leading social scientists examined how ChatGPT-4 affects the daily work of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) consultants, a substantial 7% of their consulting force (758 consultants). The results are crystal clear: consultants using ChatGPT-4 outperformed their counterparts in every way. They took on 18 different tasks, carefully chosen to reflect the typical work at an elite consulting firm, and the AI-equipped consultants excelled. → They finished 12.2% more tasks on average, completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, and produced results of 40% higher quality compared to those without AI support. Let's get this straight: there's a 40% improvement in task quality, mirroring the tasks elite consultants tackle daily. Not embracing AI isn't just a missed opportunity; it's a clear oversight. Beyond just speed and volume, the standout advantage of AI is clearly in delivering superior quality. These findings emphasize the immense impact of AI in the workplace. In light of this research, it's ironic to think that many companies still hesitate to provide their knowledge workers with AI tools, especially when the cost is typically around $20-30 per license. Saving a mere $30 per employee pales in comparison to the substantial gains in productivity and quality that AI brings. Highlighting also our own experience at LEGIT; after just a 2-hour introduction to ChatGPT, individuals with zero AI experience estimated saving 1 to 3 hours per week. This illustrates the importance of simply getting the workforce to test these tools – taking that initial step is often the most challenging part. I'd like to end this with a quote from Ethan Mollick, one of the authors, who said: "On some tasks AI is immensely powerful, and on others it fails completely or subtly. And, unless you use AI a lot, you won’t know which is which." There are so many things I'd like to share in this post, but I'll leave that to Ethan whose summary of the working paper (link in the comments) perfectly highlights numerous important aspects of the study. Additionally, the study itself is linked in the comments for further reference. Picture credit: "Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier" by Ethan Mollick, 16 September 2023.