Should promotion depend on how workers use AI?

It's in Duncan Trevithick's interest to be good at using AI at work - if he can use it to get more tasks done, faster, he'll qualify for a bonus at the end of the year.

On the surface, it's a great incentive. But he's questioning what's really in it for him.

"The uncomfortable interpretation is that employees are being assessed on how effectively they can participate in their own redundancy," says Spain-based Trevithick, 34, who works in marketing for an AI training data company.

But if he uses AI to take care of two days worth of work each week, he says the financial rewards don't add up.

"I do not receive two days off or a 40% pay rise. The higher output simply becomes the new baseline. In the short term, that may help me get promoted. In the longer term, I have helped prove how much of my job no longer requires me," he says.

"I'm just trying to view myself as a manager, and I'm managing some people, and I'm also managing AI agents, or AI loops, or whatever you want to call it."

Using employees' AI abilities as a measure of whether they should get a bonus, promoted - or even sacked - is fast becoming more common.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told the Rapid Response podcast in March: "Today, AI at Accenture is how we do work. So if you want to get promoted, you've got to do the things that we do in order to operate at Accenture."