🔒 The empathy tax: The hidden cost of the AI revolution

Marta, the head of an analytics department of a dozen-plus people, looks at her calendar with growing frustration. For the past month, her team has been using advanced AI agents to generate reports. In theory—according to the leadership’s promises—this move was supposed to free up 30% of her time. In practice, Marta’s calendar is bursting at the seams. Instead of analyzing data and crafting new strategies, she now spends hours in endless one-on-one meetings on Teams. Her employees are stressed, dropping hints about restructuring and questioning the point of their daily tasks, since “the machine does it in three minutes.” Marta was supposed to be an analyst, and she’s become her team’s full-time therapist.

Even though this particular story is fictional, an alarming number of leaders and middle managers will see themselves in it today. You only need to spend a few minutes on anonymous industry forums for project managers, PR specialists or analysts to see that Marta’s scenario is business as usual in today’s companies. Middle management is drowning in complaints tied to fear of artificial intelligence—AI Anxiety.