Using A Tool Or Outsourcing Intellect?

Conceptual illustration created using AI and refined for this publication.

Success is often recognized only when it becomes visible. Yet visibility itself is subjective,it changes across cultures, communities, professions, and even personal beliefs. You may be struggling with overwhelming responsibilities and still be labelled as unproductive, while someone taking time to rest may be admired as a symbol of balance or achievement. Behind every visible success lies an invisible context, and behind every overlooked individual may lie challenges that a résumé or social media profile can never reveal.

Recognition has always been influenced by social expectations, but in the digital age those expectations have become increasingly measurable. Followers, engagement, certifications, productivity metrics, and constant online presence often shape how competence is perceived. As visibility becomes intertwined with professional value, the pressure to remain relevant no longer comes only from competing with other people—it also comes from keeping pace with rapidly evolving technology.

Visibility is more or less connected with the reach on digital platforms today, which is somehow a matter of fact because that's the way global networking works. However, competency is no longer restricted among humans; the rapid technological advancements and change assessment methodology for work efficiency are significant factors in increasing the anxiety levels of employees and entrepreneurs. As visibility increasingly becomes a measure of professional worth in the digital economy, technological change intensifies the pressure to remain relevant. Artificial intelligence has amplified this pressure, making many workers feel that productivity alone is no longer enough, they must also adapt continuously

The increasing pressure to adopt artificial intelligence has given rise to “AI anxiety,” with many professionals fearing job displacement or feeling compelled to acquire new technical skills simply to remain competitive. At the organisational level, AI adoption is often pursued rapidly, yet effective implementation frequently requires more than simply deploying new tools—it demands changes in workflows, governance, and employee training. Simultaneously, the capabilities of modern generative AI are built upon extensive datasets containing human-created works, placing questions of attribution, consent, and copyright at the centre of contemporary legal and ethical debates.

According to reporting by ITPro, concerns have emerged around "botsitting"—the time employees spend reviewing and correcting AI-generated outputs. The publication references findings from Glean's workplace productivity survey, which suggests that many workers devote a notable amount of time to making AI-generated work usable. It claims that:

87% 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 organisation is performing significantly better as a result.

So where are the gains going?

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-wrong answers AI leaves behind. Workers now burn an average of 6.4 hours a week botsitting — most of a full working day, every week.

When that labor is untracked, unbudgeted, and unrewarded, workers start cutting corners. They stop checking outputs and deliver work they can’t fully explain or defend. That’s when botsitting turns into something more dangerous: botshitting — shipping AI-generated work that workers haven’t reviewed, don’t fully understand, or couldn’t defend if asked. Today, 69% of AI users admit to botshitting at work

• Gen Z workers are 19% more likely to botshit than older workers.

• Managers are 6% more likely to botshit than individual contributors or executives.

• Men are 8% more likely to botshit than women.

Would you use a spoon to fix a screw? Probably NO!

So, the next time you see an AI-associated product, report, concept, or even a simple schedule, it is wiser to add human intellect and avoid panic crash-outs from not being able to implement it.  Understand the use, method and requirement of AI in your task just like any other tool. It is a tool that helps you to create quality outputs, however excess of dependency, resistance and malpractices can yield outputs that apparently put a tick across your task schedule, but it often has no relation to the better performance and originality of the work required.

The challenge of the AI era is not simply learning to use new technology, it is learning when not to rely on it.

Visibility may open doors, and artificial intelligence may accelerate routine tasks, but neither can replace curiosity, judgment, or originality. The most valuable professionals will not be those who automate every decision, but those who know when human thinking adds value that no algorithm can replicate.

Perhaps success has never been about being the fastest. Perhaps it has always been about remaining thoughtfully human while the world races ahead.