Work AI Index 2026: The Hidden Human Labor of Botsitting and Botshitting in AI-Powered Workplaces
By
Rebecca Hinds, Mark Hoffman, Stephanie Baladi, Hancheng Cao, Yong Lee, Paul Leonardi, Aruna Ranganathan, Jen Rhymer, Steven Rogelberg, Bob Sutton, Yi Zhu, Jacob Ewing
Crackling crust, pillowy middle. The kind of bagel that earns a second cup of coffee.
Summary
A comprehensive global report reveals that while 87% of digital workers use AI at work and 75% report productivity gains (saving ~11 hours/week), only 13% say their organization performs significantly better. The gains are being consumed by a new invisible labor called "botsitting" — the hidden human work of feeding AI context, checking outputs, debugging mistakes, and cleaning up errors. The report examines the gap between individual AI productivity and organizational performance, highlighting the unaccounted labor costs of AI integration in the workplace.
Key quotes
· 3 pulled87% of digital workers now use AI at work. 75% say it makes them more productive, saving them roughly 11 hours each per week through automation alone.
Yet only 13% say their organization is performing significantly better as a result.
They're being swallowed by a new, largely invisible form of labor. We call it botsitting: the work required to make AI usable, including feeding it missing context, checking its outputs, debugging its mistakes, rerunning prompts, and cleaning up the confident-but
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