Artificial intelligence is transforming how people work. While AI, said to drastically reduce time for work earlier used to take up hours to do, is triggering mass layoffs in companies, one Mumbai-based startup founder has a completely completely different take on AI. Mustafa Yusuf, founder of Msquare Labs in Mumbai, captured this tension in a post on X that struck a chord with some, while many opposed his opionion as well.
Yusuf described a productivity paradox - tasks that once wrapped up in half an hour now stretch to two hours, while others that used to demand a full two-hour block are now done in thirty minutes. The trade-off, he suggested, is real and unpredictable.
The post spread quickly, drawing responses from professionals who recognised the same pattern in their own work. One commenter pointed to what they called a 'debugging paradox' - AI helps developers write cleaner code upfront, but second-guessing every AI-generated suggestion ends up consuming the time saved. Another noted that AI has effectively redistributed effort rather than eliminating it. The tedious parts move faster, but more time now goes into framing prompts and setting up context before any actual work begins.
Others were more optimistic. One user said tasks they had been putting off for weeks because of their complexity were now getting done. Another reflected on the longer horizon - automating repetitive workflows takes hours upfront but pays off significantly over time.
The responses revealed a nuanced reality emerging around AI adoption -tools that promise blanket efficiency gains are, in practice, highly task-dependent. Gains in one area often surface hidden costs in another.
Yusuf's observation comes at a time when organisations are increasingly scrutinising how AI tools are actually changing the shape of work – not just whether they're being used, but what they're doing to the nature of effort, attention, and expertise required to get things done.
