AI also creates instruction and oversight work
Nathan Wilmers, Regina Catipon, Maxim Massenkoff, Peter McCrory · The Anthropic Institute · 16 Oct 2026
Source finding
At Anthropic, the average employee’s share of interactive Claude sessions for instructions, documentation and oversight rose from 10% in autumn 2025 to 22% in spring 2026. This includes plans for AI agents, reviews of their results and monitoring dashboards.
Our interpretation
AI can create additional preparation and oversight work. Businesses should make these tasks visible. The finding describes sessions at the vendor itself, not a share of working time or a general productivity gain.
Method and evidence
Observational analysis of internal employment, usage and work records plus 17 interviews. For the session-content analysis, 2,000 short session summaries were classified automatically. This analysis is distinct from the separate engineering-team and hiring analyses.
Limitations and interests
Anthropic studies its own rapidly growing company and sells the AI under study. No random assignment, no independent replication, limited generalisability. Automated classification can be wrong. Tokens and estimated reading time do not measure actual human review time.
What businesses can do
Track time spent on instructions, documentation and oversight separately from execution. Assign responsibility for these tasks and specify which results need review.
Where to start
Start with the section on work tasks and Figure 7 in the original report, then the session-classification methods. Published on 16 October 2026.