AI saves about 3% of your hours, and almost none of it reaches the money

Danish researchers linked AI adoption surveys of 25,000 workers to payroll data and found AI saves about 2.8% of work hours—roughly one hour a week—but has no significant impact on earnings. Only 3–7% of the productivity gain reached pay. Lab studies show 40% speedups on single tasks, but real jobs dilute that to a few percent. A Harvard-BCG experiment found AI users were 19 percentage points less likely to get the right answer on tasks outside AI's sweet spot. An MIT report says 95% of organizations see zero return on AI spending. The author argues the gain is real but leaky: stack AI on high-volume, repeatable work and deliberately convert saved time into billable output.

Why it matters: Uses Danish payroll data from 25,000 workers to dissect real AI productivity gains, clearly quantifying the gap between lab (40%) and real-world (2.8%) results. Not scored higher because it's a synthesis of existing research rather than a primary release, and the conclusion is...