Are AI tools making things easier or are they just changing the type of work that needs to be done

Reddit r/artificial / 4/23/2026

💬 OpinionIdeas & Deep Analysis

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Key Points

The author observes that AI tools speed up generating ideas and approaches, enabling many options in minutes rather than hours.
While this initially seems like a straightforward way to get more done, it often increases a different type of effort focused on reviewing outputs and comparing alternatives.
The decision-making step—choosing what is actually worthwhile—can feel as time-consuming as the original task, or more so.
Overall, the author frames AI as shifting work from “creating” to “selecting,” and asks how others are managing this change.

I have noticed that AI tools make it very easy to come up with a lot of ideas or ways to do things very quickly.

For example, if you are working on a side project or even just a simple plan, you can now come up with a lot of different ideas in a matter of minutes instead of spending hours thinking about one.

At first, it look like a clear way to get more done. But in reality, it often leads to a different kind of work, like looking over outputs, weighing options and deciding what is really worth doing.

Sometimes, that decision layer feels like more work than the work itself.

So instead of taking away work, it looks like AI is moving it from making things to choosing things.

I am interested in how other people are dealing with this.
Do you think AI is really saving time or is it just shifting the work?

submitted by /u/Nervous-Jeweler-7428
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