21 May 2026 09:00
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
