What I learned from a year of using AI not to automate my work, but to challenge my thinking and push beyond what I thought possible. This is the first in a two-part series for Workforce Architecture called The AI Paradox.

By Lisa Taylor

“Make it faster. Make it cheaper. Make it easier.”

This efficiency-driven mantra underpins every conversation, article, and social media post about artificial intelligence (AI). We’re chasing automation like it’s salvation, celebrating each task that can be delegated to an algorithm. But what if we’re looking at it the wrong way? What if the real power of AI isn’t in making work easier—but in making it harder?

For the past year, I’ve intentionally explored AI, not as an automation tool, but as a partner in critical thinking, creativity, and strategic insight. My biggest takeaway?

AI’s greatest gift isn’t in eliminating effort but in amplifying human potential and capability. Instead of simply speeding up tasks, AI can push us beyond our boundaries, challenge our assumptions, and elevate the quality of our work. But only if we use it that way.

This Workforce Architecture article, the first in a two-part series, explores why we should rethink AI’s role, how it can drive real innovation and impact, and why choosing AI for hard work rather than convenience is the best path forward.

The ultimate shortcut: A false promise of easy

I’ve approached my personal learning about the use of AI, especially generative AI, with intention and purpose. I’ve kept track of how I’m using it, how others are using it, and what experts are saying about it. I’ve also looked beyond the headlines, noticing what’s less obvious and how it might provide different insights to unlock real impact.

Many posts and tips about AI recommend tools to help do something faster or cheaper. Create headshots, clip videos, write social media posts, and so on. AI is being positioned and promoted as the ultimate shortcut that will make everything about our lives and work easier.

This is the wrong path to go down.

Early in my consulting career, common wisdom held that, in any given project, work can meet only two of three criteria: good, fast, or cheap. (Good refers to high quality.) Clients had to choose which two criteria mattered most to them.

Messaging about AI promises us this trade-off no longer exists. We can actually have it all—it will be good, fast, andcheap. All signs point to this not being true. More importantly, we shouldn’t want it to be true.

The growing reliance on AI is setting us up for a future that might be fast and cheap (i.e., fully automated), but it may not necessarily be good (i.e., high quality or moral). It also threatens to lower the bar on what we judge to be good.

From automation to innovation: Redefining the purpose of AI

My greatest learning over the past year is that while AI can help me complete tasks faster or cheaper, the moments of true breakthrough come when they challenge my thinking and help me approach my work more expansively and creatively. This is a key ingredient in innovation. It’s the first step in how we explore, ask questions, defy the status quo, and ideate to solve for unmet needs or problems.

As neuroscientist and AI expert Vivienne Ming explains, we should be using AI to make our work harder—to push the limits of our capabilities and knowledge, to innovate and maximize our human potential rather than surrender it for the sake of “easy.” Prompts that ask me a series of questions, one at a time, to challenge my understanding or perspective of a topic have proven invaluable for broader strategic thinking with my team, partners, advisors, and clients.

“That’s what we should all be aspiring to,” Ming says. “Not how AI can do the things for you that you can already do, but how it can allow you to accomplish things you’ve never been able to do before.”

The choices we make about AI’s role in our work will determine whether it strengthens our abilities or weakens them. Figure 1 illustrates these trade-offs, showing how AI can either diminish critical thinking and job creation or enhance human insight and innovation. The key question is: Are we using AI to replace human effort—or to amplify it?

The intentional choice: Quality over convenience

Using AI to make our work better or more impactful is a game-changer. But with all the messaging about AI pushing us to work both faster and cheaper, to take the shortcut, using AI to move our work from “done to good” or “good to great” has to be an intentional choice. Without that intention, we will default to the lowest common denominator. Our work and thinking will become ever more generic, less inspired and innovative, and suitable only for the mass consumer rather than the changemaker.

If our relationship with AI becomes fully defined by easy work, our definition of productivity will shift as well, becoming narrower and tied to KPIs that close us off from innovation. Another way to think about this is to focus on using AI not only to make our work higher quality, but also to enhance our own skills and thinking. Using AI narrowly, as a tool designed only to complete tasks faster and cheaper, is very tempting. But AI is more than a taskmaster—or even a tool.

AI is better understood as a technology, like electricity is a technology.

It creates and distributes resources in ways that weren’t previously possible. It’s a utility that powers many aspects of daily life, as well as a resource you can choose to apply when it serves your needs. As we all adapt to this new resource, the opportunity lies in exploring how it can make you better, smarter, or more aware. As a result, your work will become more novel and your own skills stronger.

What choice will you make for the future?

In our rush to make everything faster, cheaper, and easier, we’re missing something profound: AI’s greatest gift is its ability to make our work more challenging, not less.

What if AI could do something more meaningful than just speed everything up? What if, instead of making our work more efficient, it could make us better?

We’re at a pivotal moment. AI is more than a tool, and it’s already shaping the Future of Work, learning, innovation, and even human potential. How it shapes them in the months and years to come is up to us. Let’s make the right choice.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in The AI Paradox series, coming March 2025.