AI saved someone time. It cost me several hours

I once received a report prepared with AI. I spent several hours reading it. Only later, talking to a colleague, did it become clear how much nonsense it contained. Nobody had checked it properly beforehand.

Time savings should be counted for the whole process, not only for the author of the document.

That experience comes back to me whenever I hear about saving time by generating documents. On whose side are we counting the saving?

If preparing a report took five minutes and the recipient needs two hours to separate useful information from made-up content, it is hard to call it better collaboration. Those numbers are an example, but I learnt the mechanism first-hand. The author got rid of part of the work, and the recipient got an extra task they did not know about.

The format lulls our vigilance

The form makes the problem worse. A tidy document, a confident tone, headings and a summary suggest that someone has already done the analytical work. The recipient starts weighing the conclusions when they should first check what they are based on. After all, we do not read every report from a colleague as a potentially faulty product.

Generating is not the same as handing over

That is why I separate two stages: generating material and handing it to someone to work with. Between them the author has to check it. Not by reading the first paragraph and fixing commas, but by checking the numbers, the key claims, the sources and whether the recommendations actually follow from the data.

It is perfectly fair to pass on raw material. In that case it should be clear that it is a working draft that needs verification. You can also send a text prepared with AI and say: “I have checked it and I stand behind its content”. That, however, is a commitment. Not a decoration for an email signature.

A simple rule is worth agreeing on in a team: the person sending a document says what state it is in and what they expect from the recipient. To read, to check or to make a decision: each of these situations means different work.

AI is great at helping me shape my thoughts, organise material and prepare a first draft. I use it for exactly that. But before we decide that we have sped up the process, let us also count the time of the people who receive the result. A saving that ends at the “send” button may simply be someone else’s cost.

What this means for a company

In practice a manager can start with a simple calculation: how long it takes to prepare the material, how long to check it and how many corrections are needed after it is handed over. Only the sum of these stages shows whether AI really improves the team’s work.