#productivity

A natural oak seminar table in a sunlit university research laboratory with an aluminum easel bearing a drafted boundary curve, one dry-erase marker caught mid-roll across the timber ledge with its cap unseated.

The Jagged Frontier Fallacy: Deconstructing Harvard's Canonical AI Productivity Study

Harvard's benchmark BCG experiment claimed AI creates an unpredictable capability cliff. A first-principles systems analysis shows the study measured un-scaffolded chat latency and open-loop control failure, not frontier limits.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 22, 2026 · 12 min read

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