AI systems increasingly shape human workflows by generating intermediate artifacts that users can adopt, revise, or ignore. While prior work has shown that AI assistance can improve the efficiency and accuracy of required tasks, less is known about whether it can increase participation in discretionary but beneficial work that users often intend to perform but frequently skip. We study this question in the context of personalized feedback provision in higher education, a pedagogically valuable but often optional practice. We conduct a mixed-methods study combining a randomized field experiment and qualitative interviews in a 300-level machine learning course with n=11 teaching assistants (TAs) and n=88 students. Student submissions were randomly assigned to either (1) a treatment condition where TAs received AI-assisted feedback drafts after grading or (2) a control condition without drafts. TAs remained fully in control and could use, edit, or ignore drafts at their discretion. We find that AI-assisted feedback significantly increases feedback provision (+10.8 percentage points, SE=1.1, p<0.001) and feedback length (+39.8 chars, SE=3.45, p<0.001) without negatively affecting student usefulness ratings or reducing time per character. Qualitative findings suggest that AI-assisted drafts function as editable scaffolds that lower barriers to initiating feedback rather than reducing overall effort. Our findings highlight AI's promise for discretionary but beneficial tasks: increasing work that might otherwise go undone while preserving human control over final outcomes.

翻译：人工智能系统通过生成可采纳、修改或忽略的中间产物，正日益塑造人类工作流程。尽管已有研究表明AI辅助能提升必要任务的效率与准确性，但对于其能否增加用户本愿执行却常被搁置的自主性有益工作参与度，目前仍知之甚少。本研究以高等教育中个性化反馈提供为场景（一项具有教学价值但常属可选实践的环节），通过混合方法研究——在300级机器学习课程中对11名助教与88名学生开展随机现场实验及定性访谈。学生提交的作业被随机分配至（1）实验组：助教在批改后获得AI辅助生成的反馈草稿；（2）对照组：未提供草稿。助教全程保留完全自主权，可酌情使用、编辑或忽略草稿。研究发现：AI辅助反馈显著提升反馈提供量（+10.8个百分点，标准误=1.1，p<0.001）与反馈篇幅（+39.8字符，标准误=3.45，p<0.001），且未对学生有用性评分或单位时间字符数产生负面影响。定性分析表明，AI辅助草稿充当了可编辑的认知支架，其功能在于降低启动反馈的门槛，而非减少整体工作量。本研究凸显了AI在自主性有益任务中的潜力：既增加本可能被省略的工作量，又保持人类对最终结果的掌控权。