The hidden use of AI versus the new pact of bottom-up productivity

"Better and better! Since I started paying for the premium version of IAGen, I do everything in half the time."

Have you heard a similar conversation? The paradox is clear: Why would an employee pay for a tool that their company could provide?

The answers I get refer me to a concept known as “the hidden use of IAGen”. As soon as the chatGPT 3.5 boom and its transformer architecture began, I read surveys of its use in companies, with two conclusive data:

His incorporation into the company's tasks was not with the traditional top-down, but in the opposite direction. The employees who used it in their personal lives carried it into their work lives.

Most of them did not tell their bosses. Of 11,700 American professionals surveyed (Fishbowl/Glassdoor, 2023), 68% hid it.

Even this year this rate remains high. In a survey of 32,352 employees from 47 countries (Gillespie et al, 2025) it is around 61%.

In the search for the main causes of this behavior, two terms from Bourdieu's constructivist-structuralist Sociology came to mind that I believe describe it well: Habitus and Illusio.

The first describes the subjective system of expectations and predispositions that influence the way you think, feel and act accordingly. What expectation does that collaborator have about the sharing of profits for the improvement in productivity that he contributed leveraged by his IAGen co-pilot? Will the company incorporate optimization and begin to require the new productivity threshold at the same salary? Will you reduce the working day by paying the same salary, since you obtain the same result with the same costs?

The etymology of the second is clear: “in” enter and “ludum” game. It refers to the interest that social agents have in participating in a game of relationships (in the case of labor, the relationships necessary for the business to happen). Does the employee want to participate in the game that the company traditionally proposes or do they prefer to rewrite the rules (together, or each one on their own, without even communicating)? Was there not some of this behavior in the post-pandemic crisis of the “Great resignation” (Great resignation or Big Quit)?

What if, taking advantage of this “momentum” we think creatively “outside the box” and make a pact with rules of the game that all stakeholders like in search of theIllusio Socioeconomic? I propose to get out of the labyrinth of the hidden use of IAGen “from above”:

The adoption of IAGen in companies to gain productivity requires the transparent and collaborative attitude of people; and people need to trust the distribution of added value with a better work-life balance. The great improvement potential of the IAGen revolution allows, if we agree, a win-win distribution: With a 50% improvement we can reduce the working day to 80% and obtain a 20% improvement in production. And, in its virtuous circle, the reduction in working hours that is being tested under the 100:80:100 model shows additional positive trends. According to the report from the 4 Day Week organization, debated at the World Economic Forum (Davos), which promotes tests around the world, the results show less absenteeism, more commitment, and a better work environment:

• 82% greater balance in work and personal life.
• 37% reduction in sleeping problems.
• 34% improvement in physical health.

The real change is not just implementing a new technology or working one day less per week. It is to manage the adoption of IAGen in the workplace under the guidelines of collaborative socioeconomic productivity as a objective and cultural change.