Assistive chatbots like ChatGPT boost worker productivity: MIT report

A new study by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers has found that generative AI boosts workers productivity for certain writing assignments. According to the report, access to the assistive chatbot ChatGPT reduced the task completion time by 40 percent, while output quality, as measured by independent evaluators, rose by 18 percent.

"I think what our study shows is that this kind of technology has important applications in white collar work. It's a useful technology. But it's still too early to tell if it will be good or bad, or how exactly it’s going to cause society to adjust," said Shakked Noy, a PhD student in MIT's Department of Economics, who co-authored the paper with fellow PhD student Whitney Zhang ’21.

The rapid advancement of technology has long fueled concerns about mass automation and job loss. However, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence can also lead to the creation of new jobs when they improve worker productivity, ultimately driving positive economic outcomes.

The research involved 453 college-educated professionals from various fields, including marketers, grant writers, consultants, data analysts, human resource professionals, and managers. The study participants were assigned two occupation-specific writing tasks including writing cover letters, composing emails about organizational restructuring, and developing customer analysis plans for targeted notifications.

Participants who utilized ChatGPT-3.5 for the second task completed their assignments approximately 11 minutes faster compared to the control group while their average quality evaluations increased by an impressive 18 percent.

The researchers behind this study acknowledge several limitations that may impact the real-world applicability, but those limitations could lessen the productivity-boosting capabilities of generative AI technologies.

"The experiment demonstrates that it does bring significant speed benefits, even if those speed benefits are lesser in the real world because you need to spend time fact-checking and writing the prompts," Noy said.

Both Noy and Zhang agree that much work remains to be done to figure out how society should respond to generative AI’s proliferation.

More details can be found here.