Sessions with identical quality ratings differ by up to 70x in interaction cost.

A productivity framework scoring human-AI collaboration as outcome quality relative to interaction cost, across two datasets and four tasks, finds the quality-cost relationship flips by task (some reward extended interaction, others fast convergence) and subjective user ratings are not a reliable substitute for productivity. Productive sessions are characterized by the agent probing earlier and the user spending less effort repairing the interaction. The 70x spread is the number to hold: your satisfaction score is not measuring what your time is measuring.