Unveiling the Hidden Labor of Botsitting in AI Workplaces.

A June 2026 survey of 6,000 office workers in the US, UK, and Australia reports AI “saves” 11 hours a week, but 6.4 hours are spent supplying context, checking, correcting, and cleaning outputs—work Glean’s Work AI Institute and academic partners call “botsitting,” which is unrecognised, unbudgeted, and untracked.

The piece argues dashboards log visible generation while reclassifying verification as ordinary labor, helping explain why only 13% of organisations see significant performance gains despite 87% of individuals using AI constantly.

Under pressure, 69% admit to “botshitting” (shipping unverified work), creating downstream “workslop” that costs time and money. Drawing on research on automation bias, vigilance, and skill decay, plus studies showing mixed productivity effects, it calls for measuring cognitive load, logging oversight steps, training supervision, and treating verification as real, bargained-for work.