Welcome to this guide!

What you will find here is how to get the most work for every dollar you pay your workers, and at which point to change to a pure AI staff, for both research and creative work, and on runs using or avoiding interns.

This guide was made on version V03.02.2020.

Edit: Contents still correct as of version V08.04.2021.

So here is the table for how much work, in both research and creative, an employee provides per million dollars in wages at base (1.0x salaries):

As worker unrest rises, inevitably you will have to raise the wage of your workers, which will lead to less work per million in wages. That is the main advantage of A.Is, as their "wages" are not affected by the wage multiplier.

This section will show the thresholds at which each A.I becomes more efficient at each kind of work, for both runs that uses or avoids Interns.

For intern runs, all comparisons are to Interns against the specified employee type, as interns are the most efficient type of employee at 1.0x wages.

Intern runs (Research):

1.20x Wages: Machine God becomes more efficient (Interns provide 1.5 research at this level)
1.44x Wages: Silicon Nightmare becomes more efficient (Interns provide 1.25 research at this level)
1.73x Wages: Ambitious A.I becomes more efficient. (Interns provide 1.0405 research at this level)
2.07x Wages: Chatty A.I becomes more efficient. (Interns provide 0.8696 research at this level)
2.49x Wages: Simple A.I becomes more efficient (Interns provide 0.7292 research at this level)

Intern runs (Creative):

3.58x Wages: Machine God becomes more efficient (Interns provide 0.5028 creative at this level)
4.30x Wages: Silicon Nightmare and both Ambitious and Chatty A.I are more efficient at this level (Interns provide 0.4186 creative at this level)
7.43x Wages: Simple A.I becomes more efficient (Interns provide 0.2423 creative at this level)

Now as seen on the table above, when avoiding interns, research and creative have different employees of the human category as the most efficient. All comparisons are made against the most efficient for that category.

Intern-less runs (Research):

For this type of run, the most efficient human researcher is the basic employee.

Machine God, Silicon Nightmare and Ambitious A.I are always more efficient.
Chatty A.I is equivalent at 1.0x Wages

1.44x Wages: Simple A.I becomes more efficient. (Employee provides 0.6944 research at this level)

Intern-less runs (Creative):

In this run, the most efficient human creative worker is the Contracted Ubermensch

2.99x Wages: Machine God becomes more efficient (Ubermensch provides 0.5016 creative at this level)
3.58x Wages: Silicon Nightmare and both Ambitious and Chatty A.I becomes more efficient (Ubermensch provides 0.4190 creative at this level)
6.19x Wages: Simple A.I becomes more efficient (Ubermensch provides 0.2423 creative at this level)

I hope this guide is of use on squeezing every cent out of your company on the early game and avoiding the wage snowball that can end a game when the budget is running on the billion mark per turn and unrest is rising by 40% per turn on the end game.

This guide also does not deal with the events that happen on transition to 20%, and later, 50% automated workforce, nor the problem of going over A.I 2.0 on the tech tree, as these are out of the scope of this guide

Now go subjugate (or satisfy, I don't judge) the board for power, and now, even more profit!