Researchers from MIT Sloan and Stanford studied rollout of an AI conversational support tool to 5,179 customer support workers at a Fortune 500 software company, analyzing 1.2 million chats post-deployment. The tool offered suggestions and resource links; workers adopted approximately 38% of suggestions. Aggregate productivity gains reached 14%, with gains concentrated among lower-skill and newer workers; high-skill workers saw near-zero efficiency gains. Secondary effects included reduced customer friction and lower turnover among newer workers. The finding directly tests whether measured productivity gains from AI in knowledge work are large enough to change staffing plans and whether entry-level roles are being compressed rather than eliminated outright.
206 other tracked developments touching the same claims.