Examine the art and science of working with AI

Microsoft gained valuable insights into how AI is going to transform work from the millions of customers and employees who are already using Microsoft 365 Copilot. Its early findings show that there's both an art and a science to working with AI. One of its key findings is that what you get out of it depends on how you ask.

This new way of working is sorely needed. Over the past few years, the pace and volume of work continue to rise. According to data from searches across Microsoft 365 services, on any given workday, Microsoft's heaviest Microsoft 365 users:

• Search for what they need 18 times.
• Receive more than 250 emails.
• Send or read nearly 150 chats.

Across the globe, users of Microsoft Teams are in three times more meetings each week than they were in 2020. And on Windows, some people use 11 apps in a single day to get their work done.

AI helps lift the weight of work, augmenting human capability and accelerating everyone's innate ingenuity. When leaders learn how to effectively harness the power of AI, they can empower their people to embrace this new era of AI-powered productivity and reap the benefits for their organization.

Building new work habits

The PC revolutionized access to word processors, and now AI offers an always-available partner to assist with nearly everything. AI is transforming the way people work, lead, and hire by helping employees save time, boost creativity, and focus on their most important tasks. Many workers, overwhelmed by workload and time constraints, find that AI acts as a personal assistant, offering endless support and energy to enhance their performance.

The potential for integrating AI into organizations' everyday business processes is enormous, but working with AI requires building new work habits. Although AI can't replicate the magic of brainstorming with other people, it significantly enhances rapid collaboration, especially for flexible and distributed teams who aren't in the same office or time zone. In fact, Copilot can enhance collaboration with your team. For example, just ask it to pinpoint the unresolved questions during a Teams meeting or suggest any potential discussion points when cocreating in Loop. You can also use the Copilot Prompt Gallery to experiment with prompts, share your favorites with fellow workers, and get inspired.

Lifting the weight of work

Everyone struggles under the weight of work. Information, deadlines, and the crush of "always-on" communication can often overwhelm us. AI can help, not just by making work easier or faster, but by making it more fulfilling. When you don't need to spend as much cognitive energy on figuring out what happened in that meeting, getting caught up on email, or finding that document from that chat last week, you can spend more time on the substance of your work and your purpose for doing it.

Researchers at Microsoft who study AI-augmented cognition suggest that it may be useful to think of our relationship with AI through a sports analogy.

• At one end of the spectrum, the researchers say, AI can function like a steroid, giving people a short-term superhuman boost just by offloading work to it. For example, instantaneous email drafts and quick social media copy.
• In the middle of the spectrum, AI is like a high-quality running shoe. It can speed up routine, time-consuming tasks (think cleaning and reformatting data), freeing up time, and making people more productive in the moment without any long-term consequences.
• At the other end of the spectrum is where AI begins to truly transform work. It's at this point when AI serves as a coach, improving people's own capabilities over time instead of merely assisting them in the moment.

With thoughtful design and use, the researchers explain, AI tools can augment people's innate abilities. In doing so, it can lead to unprecedented boosts in productivity.