My understanding is that the current implementation is only groundwork for possible future performance benefits, since there are no changes to the runtime system or garbage collector, and that their current intended use is mostly for allowing library authors to encode safe session/resource handling in the type system. So, new libraries can make it a type error to fail to properly close a connection or release a shared resource.

Simon Peyton Jones talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0mhvd3-60Y