AI’s transformative advantages will be larger than you think

An overview

There’s been a lot of talk about AI boosting individual productivity, but what happens when we zoom out to look at teams and entire companies? The productivity gains at these larger scales might actually be even more dramatic than what we’re seeing at the individual level. Companies that can figure out how to leverage AI effectively may see fundamental shifts in how expertise is shared and how work gets done.

Case studies

A highly skilled developer

For experienced practitioners who know how to use AI effectively, the productivity gains can be dramatic. Take Salvatore “Antirez” Sanfilippo, the creator of Redis, who shared his experience on the Refactoring.fm podcast:

“I believe I am more or less five times faster than I was before AI when writing system code… I can create in two months what normally could take like one year of work or six months at least. So the multiplicator is brutal because I can do things that otherwise I would never do because they would be too time-consuming.”

This is crucial to understand: Salvatore wasn’t just doing the same work faster. He was tackling problems he would have previously avoided entirely because they were too complex or time-consuming. AI expanded the scope of what he could accomplish, not just the speed.

The P&G’s field experiment

Not everyone is going to see 5x productivity gains right away, especially with minimal training. A Harvard field study was conducted with Procter & Gamble last summer where employees received brief training on AI tools. Their productivity increases were more modest but still significant: 12-16%.

What’s fascinating is what happened beyond the raw productivity numbers. The researchers observed that the “siloing of expertise” - that common organizational problem where knowledge gets trapped in departmental bubbles - seemed to diminish significantly with AI use. People could tap into knowledge domains outside their specialties, breaking down traditional barriers between teams.

As the researchers noted: “It is also possible that our results represent a lower bound: all of these experiments were conducted with GPT-4 or GPT-4o, less capable models than what are available today; the participants did not have a lot of prompting experience so they may not have gotten as much benefit; and chatbots are not really built for teamwork.”

In other words, even these impressive results likely understate the potential.

Why it matters

The implications here go way beyond individual productivity boosts:

1. We’re just getting started. The P&G study used earlier, less capable AI models, and participants had minimal training. As models improve and people get better at using them, we should expect even greater gains.

2. The ceiling is high. Salvatore’s experience shows that with skill and experience, productivity gains can far exceed the modest 12-16% seen in initial corporate experiments. The difference between novice and expert AI users appears to be substantial.

3. Breaking down knowledge silos. Perhaps the most transformative aspect is how AI democratizes expertise across organizations. When anyone can query an AI about marketing principles, coding practices, or financial analysis, the traditional boundaries between departments start to blur.

This is a game-changer not just for individuals but for organizational structure itself. The way companies organize teams, manage knowledge, and define roles may need fundamental rethinking.

The opportunity

The AI community has recently been buzzing about how AI won’t just disrupt individual knowledge workers but entire organizational structures. Companies that simply drop AI tools into their existing workflows are capturing only a fraction of the potential benefit.

The real opportunity lies in reimagining how work gets done:

• What if teams were organized around outcomes rather than specialized functions?
• How might decision-making change when everyone has AI-powered access to domain expertise?
• Could middle management roles evolve when information flows more freely?

And we’re just at the beginning. The multi-agent systems coming online this year - where multiple AI agents collaborate with each other and humans - will make these opportunities even more apparent and accessible.

Companies that experiment boldly with new organizational structures built around AI capabilities may find themselves with not just incremental productivity gains, but transformative competitive advantages.