Just Because You Can: The Eggbeater Effect Revisited

Eight months before ChatGPT launched to the world, I wrote about "the eggbeater effect," or the tendency for labor-saving tools to create new labor. Four years later, I'm revisiting that idea. Remember: just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Footnotes:

• Read the essay version of this episode.
• "The Stepford Wives" on You're Wrong About
• More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan
• "The Illusion of AI Productivity Gains" by Philippa Hardman
• "AI Doesn't Reduce Work—It Itensifies It" by Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye in Harvard Business Review
• "AI's big productivity boost? It's happening from the sofa" at Stanford Institution for Economic Policy Research
• "Seeing Software" by Tara McMullin on What Works
• "The Eggbeater Effect" by Tara McMullin on What Works (original)
• "How the Push for Efficiency Changes Us" by Tara McMullin on What Works (work intensification)
• MIT State of AI in Business 2026
• "Beyond Productivity: Measuring the Real Value of AI" from Workday

• (00:00) - Making Things Fancy
• (01:19) - The Eggbeater Effect
• (06:01) - More Work for Mother
• (16:09) - Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should
• (19:43) - How to Decide When Doing More is the Right Decision

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