Are AI Tools Actually Making Us Productive — or Just Giving Us Something New to Play With?

Description and use

AI assistants are powerful but act only as advisors; users become couriers, copying output across many apps, losing context and productivity. A multimodal AI workspace that lets the AI act inside editors, docs, spreadsheets, slides, etc., can close this gap and improve productivity.

Problem

AI assistants are powerful but act only as advisors; users become couriers, copying output across many apps, losing context and productivity.

Outcome

The author identifies the courier problem and proposes a multimodal AI workspace (e.g., Xenition) as a solution to integrate AI actions directly into the tools used, improving productivity.

Workflow

• Open AI chat and request code model
• Copy code to editor
• Request API route, copy and tweak
• Request migration script, copy and tweak
• Draft documentation, paste into doc, reformat
• Generate spreadsheet formulas, copy into sheet
• Create slides, paste into deck
• Repeat for each task

Evidence

I became a courier… I had to copy the AI’s output from one window to a dozen windows it couldn’t touch.

Source

The AI was smart, but it couldn’t act inside the tools I used.

Source

Xenition… one persistent chat where the right surface opens itself… agents that don’t just answer but take multi‑step actions.

Source