A hot potato: Another company isn't just recommending that its employees use generative AI – its use is now mandatory. Yahoo Japan is so confident that the technology can improve efficiency and take over mundane tasks that it expects a doubling of productivity within three years.

Yahoo Japan, operator of the country's popular Line messaging/social media app, has joined the list of firms making AI use among workers a requirement, writes PC Watch.

The 11,000 staff working at the company must use generative AI for common areas such as research, search, document creation, and meetings. These tasks apparently take up 30% of employees' work time.

Forcing workers to use AI isn't going to please a lot of people, but at least they aren't being replaced by the tech – something that has been happening at an increased frequency lately.

But what is concerning is the talk about doubling worker productivity by 2028. There's no mention of what will happen if these targets aren't met.

Yahoo Japan already uses a business AI tool called SeekAI for internal operations, such as reimbursements and creating prompt templates. It says that AI will also be used for the likes of proofreading documents, communications, organizing agendas and creating minutes.

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Using AI to perform lengthy, tedious, time-consuming tasks so people can focus on more important, creative areas sounds enticing, but we have seen plenty of studies showing that AI can actually reduce productivity instead of improving it.

A recent example demonstrated how experienced developers took 19% longer to finish tasks using AI tools. There were studies last year showing AI slowed productivity, and when the technology is used to cut down team sizes while increasing output, some workers say that – in Amazon's case – it becomes an unrelenting assembly line pumping out code at the cost of creativity and worker happiness.

There was also the case of call center workers complaining that the AI assistants that are supposed to improve speeds were creating more problems than they solved.

Earlier this year, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent an internal memo to workers explaining that AI use was now a baseline expectation at the company. He also said that before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.