Workers Long for Pre-AI Offices as Creativity and Error Fears Grow

Generative AI has spread rapidly through white-collar workplaces since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, helping employees draft documents, conduct research and analyse information. Companies have promoted the technology as a productivity tool, but its adoption is also changing professional work: employees increasingly prompt, review and correct machine-generated output instead of producing material themselves, raising questions about autonomy, skills and the value of human judgment.

A Financial Times report published on July 26, 2026, highlighted growing nostalgia among professionals for working life before AI became ubiquitous. Their concerns extend beyond job displacement. Some workers fear habitual reliance on generative tools could narrow independent thought and suppress creativity, while unpredictable errors can create additional checking and correction work. The debate underscores a widening gap between employers’ efficiency ambitions and employees’ experience of using systems that still require close human oversight.