Digital Clutter Is Weighing Us Down and AI Won’t Help

Keeping digital data is cheap, but its true cost is higher than how much you pay for storage. I’m not just talking about the monetary and environmental costs of running servers and all the air conditioning and other electricity-hungry components that keep them functional, I’m talking about what digital clutter does to you, your well-being, and your ability to feel like you’re doing a good job.

To get a handle on digital clutter and digital hoarding, especially in the workplace, we have to think about it from two angles. First, where is it all coming from? Who is generating all this data and why? Second, why do we feel compelled to keep it and what is the cost of keeping it?

Microsoft has been floating the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can help workers cope with having too much information, but the solution doesn’t address the underlying problem, nor does it take away the stress associated with feeling bulldozed by digital clutter.

Can AI Help Solve the Information Glut?

In this year’s Work Trend Index(Opens in a new window), Microsoft made the case that its AI, called Copilot, can solve some of the problems associated with “digital debt,” as the company calls it. Being inundated with emails, chats, meetings, and reports at work—or information overload(Opens in a new window)—is nothing new. What’s new is Microsoft proposing that AI can lighten the load by summarizing some of the big heaping piles of information that workers face. For example, if you miss a meeting, you can cut to the chase with a one-paragraph summary of what happened and don’t have to watch a recording of the whole meeting. It’s the TL;DR solution. Microsoft has even started some trials to see how well it works.

“64% of employees struggle with having enough time and energy just to get their work done”

I can imagine scenarios where this solution makes sense, like for people who get cc’d endlessly on emails and need to know the gist of what’s going on but not every detail. For most cases, however, using AI comes across to me as a temporary, shortsighted solution. If you’re relying on AI to summarize emails for you, maybe those messages shouldn’t have been so long in the first place.

There Are No Shortcuts to Efficiency

How much of the digital clutter in your life shouldn’t have been created at all? It’s likely that you’ve thought to yourself: This meeting should have been an email. Or this email should have been a Slack message.

A better solution for everyone would be to invest in improving core skills, like business communication, writing, and analysis. So rather than having an AI summarize a long meeting, why don’t we train people how to waste less time in meetings? There is no AI shortcut to teaching people to be efficient and productive.

Plus, if a meeting, email, or report is needlessly long, those who created it have already spent excessive time and effort making these inefficient materials. Using AI to summarize them when they reach their audience doesn’t save the writer any time.

In the Work Trend Index, Microsoft also said “64% of employees struggle with having enough time and energy just to get their work done. And those employees are three-and-a-half times more likely to say that they also struggle with being innovative or thinking strategically.”

Again, AI doesn’t sound like the right solution. Those problems sound like they come from something deeply wrong in the organization related to work expectations, work distribution, and valuing “busyness” over output. Sure, you can slap an AI bandage on it, but your organization will still be highly inefficient underneath.

AI Won’t Relieve Your Stress

The problem of “too much information” or “too much data” isn’t just about how you process it today—which is the part AI can supposedly solve. It’s also the sheer fact of having it. Researchers have made the case that digital hoarding isn’t all that different from physical hoarding(Opens in a new window) behaviors and disorders. At the heart of the matter are two conflicting feelings: I am drowning in this stuff and can’t find anything, but what if I need it someday?

The fear of discarding something because it might be useful later doesn’t come from a rational place. When the object in question is digital, though, it seems like there is no cost to saving it, so why not?

Australian researchers have made the case that the cost is personal stress(Opens in a new window). My interpretation of their conclusions is that people, generally speaking, do not treat data lightly. Information feels serious and important. Maybe changing our understanding of what data is and what it represents could create more of a lightness about it wherein we could more easily let it go.

The Cost of Ignoring the Real Problem

Since the early 2000s with the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (and to a lesser extent, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 which in part mandates that financial institutions keep emails), the US has had laws governing data retention. Organizations are responsible for storing and maintaining a lot of data. Many of these legal measures are really about not destroying evidence, and complying with them is the stuff of IT departments, legal counsel, executives, and board members. It doesn’t have anything to do with you not clearing out your inbox.

Conversely, many organizations delete data the moment they are no longer legally obliged to keep it. If it’s not all that precious to them, maybe you don’t need to treat it that way either.

But as I said, part of our problem with digital clutter is we keep making it. Businesses are not very good at giving employees time, space, and funding to develop their core work skills that would cut down on the excess data generation to begin with. Shortsighted thinking (not to mention pressure to perpetually grow profits, despite it being unsustainable) prevents managers from doing the long-term work of developing employees and their skills. An hour a week spent at a business writing class or presentation workshop has much greater potential for dividends than asking AI to turn a 75-slide PowerPoint into 10 bullet points.

It’s Time for a New Business Culture

There is a cost to clutching onto data we don’t need, and there is a lost opportunity in ignoring the fact that employees who create data needlessly would benefit from skills training. Organizations should instead build a culture where the value of data is discussed, alongside making new investments in employees’ skills rather than turning to AI for a quick-fix solution.