AI is letting some workers quietly slack off — until their bosses catch on
For nearly two years, Noah Olsen, a 21-year-old software engineer at a small Ohio roofing company, kept a secret from his manager: he was doing only half the work.
Using AI tools like Cursor and Claude Code, Olsen fed his engineering tasks into an AI coding assistant and let it do the heavy lifting. The result? He cut his 40-hour workweek in half—spending the other 20 hours scrolling Reddit and watching YouTube—without anyone noticing.
“I was copying and pasting all of my tasks into an AI agent and letting it do the work,” Olsen told *Business Insider*. “So instead of having to work about 40 hours a week, I would work around 20.”
Olsen’s story isn’t just a tale of workplace hackery—it’s a snapshot of a fleeting moment in the evolution of work itself. As companies scramble to understand and adopt AI, a window has opened for tech-savvy employees to quietly supercharge their productivity—while keeping the boost under wraps.
The Rise of AI Arbitrage
Glenn Hopper, an AI consultant in Memphis, calls this phenomenon “arbitrage”: when employees leverage tools their managers don’t yet understand or use. “If you're using AI, you're getting polished, completed reports and spreadsheets that look incredible,” Hopper said. “If you didn't know AI did it, you would think someone took hours to create something like this.”
A recent global survey of over 30,000 workers—conducted between November 2024 and January 2025 by KPMG and the University of Melbourne—found that **57% of employees have used AI at work in non-transparent ways**, including failing to disclose its use or presenting AI-generated output as their own.
For roles involving repetitive or structured tasks—like engineering, data analysis, or content drafting—the productivity gains can be staggering. “If you're an engineering prototyper, like, holy shit,” said Matt Martin, CEO of Clockwise, an AI-powered calendar optimization tool. “Your life changed in the last year.”
In fact, a recent McKinsey report estimates that **AI-powered agents could technically perform about 57% of U.S. work hours** across a wide range of occupations—right now, with today’s technology.
The Double-Edged Sword
But there’s a catch: AI isn’t perfect. “The outcome still needs to be up to snuff,” said Andrew Sobko, CEO of AI infrastructure startup Argentum AI. AI tools are prone to “hallucinations”—fabricating facts, code, or logic that sounds plausible but is wrong. That means users must still invest time in reviewing, testing, and refining AI output.
And even if the work is solid, staying silent about AI use can backfire.
For Olsen, the golden age ended last summer when his employer hired an AI specialist who rolled out the same tools to the entire team. Suddenly, Olsen’s “free” 20 hours vanished—he was expected to take on more work to fill his full-time hours. He quit in September, took a two-month trip to China, and is now freelancing for a European client who, he says, hasn’t caught on to his AI-assisted workflow yet.
The Tipping Point Is Coming
Olsen’s experience highlights a broader truth: **the AI productivity advantage won’t last forever**. McKinsey also found that while AI tools are now commonplace, most organizations—especially smaller ones—are still in the experimentation or pilot phase. Only large companies (with over $5 billion in revenue) are beginning to embed AI deeply into their operations.
But that’s changing fast.
As more employees get trained and AI becomes standard, the ability to quietly coast using automation will disappear. Sobko predicts a future where AI use is so widespread that its productivity boost becomes the baseline—not a secret weapon.
A Call for Transparency—and Celebration
Some leaders argue that instead of hiding AI use, companies should encourage and even celebrate it. “Let’s give awards for it,” said Dan Kaplan, head of the HR practice at consulting firm ZRG. By creating cultures where efficiency is rewarded—not punished—employers can harness AI’s full potential while keeping teams honest and innovative.
For now, though, workers like Olsen are living in a gray zone: getting ahead by using tomorrow’s tools in today’s workplaces, knowing the clock is ticking.
“If you're not at one of the bleeding-edge companies,” Olsen said, “then you can use AI to do a lot of your work. But who knows how long this will last.”