{"id":488169,"date":"2026-02-18T15:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/488169\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T15:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:36:15","slug":"the-bogus-four-day-workweek-that-ai-supposedly-frees-up-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/488169\/","title":{"rendered":"The bogus four-day workweek that AI supposedly \u2018frees up\u2019 | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The front-page headline in a recent Washington Post was breathless: \u201cThese companies say AI is key to their four-day workweeks.<\/a>\u201d The subhead was euphoric: \u201cSome companies are giving workers back more time as artificial intelligence<\/a> takes over more tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Post explained: \u201cmore companies may move toward a shortened workweek, several executives and researchers predict, as workers, especially those in younger generations, continue to push for better work-life balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurray! There\u2019s utopia at the end of the AI rainbow! A better work-life balance!<\/p>\n

You may have come across similar articles in Fortune magazine<\/a> and the New York Times. The AI spin brigade is in full force.<\/p>\n

Business leaders are rhapsodizing about how AI will free their employees to take more time off. Zoom\u2019s Eric Yuan told the Times<\/a> that \u201cA.I. can make all of our lives better, why do we need to work for five days a week? Every company will support three days, four days a week. I think this ultimately frees up everyone\u2019s time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, says<\/a> advancing technology could push the workweek down to just three and a half days. The Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates openly wonders whether a two-day<\/a> workweek could be the future.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk pushes the idea<\/a> to the extreme (as he does everything else): \u201cIn less than 20 years \u2013 but maybe even as little as 10 or 15 years \u2013 the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional.\u201d Even better: \u201cThere will be no poverty in the future and so no need to save money,\u201d says<\/a> Musk. \u201cThere will be universal high income.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this is pure rubbish. Even if AI produces big productivity gains \u2013 which is still an open question (an MIT study<\/a> last year found that \u201cdespite $30\u201340 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, 95% of organizations are getting zero return\u201d) \u2013 it\u2019s far from clear that workers will see much, if any, of the benefits.<\/p>\n

If productivity rises, as it\u2019s supposed to do when the workplace becomes immersed in AI, each worker will generate more value, by definition. And supposedly with more value, we\u2019re all better off.<\/p>\n

Worker productivity has been rising for years, yet the median wage has barely risen, when adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the truth: the four-day workweek will most likely come with four days\u2019 worth of pay. The three-day workweek, with three days\u2019 worth. And so on.<\/p>\n

So, as AI takes over their current work, most workers will probably get poorer or have to take additional jobs to maintain their current pay.<\/p>\n

In his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,<\/a> the great British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that in a century, \u201cthe discovery of means of economizing the use of labour\u201d would outpace our ability to \u201cfind new uses for labor\u201d. In other words, less work.<\/p>\n

Keynes was sure that by 2030 the \u201cstandard of life\u201d in Europe and the United States would be so improved by technology that no one would worry about making money. Productivity gains would create an age of abundance.<\/p>\n

In fact, by 2030, he predicted, our biggest problem would be how to use all our leisure time:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem \u2013 how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still five years away from Keynes\u2019s magic year, but at the rate we\u2019re going, his prediction seems wildly wrong.<\/p>\n

Rather than creating an age of abundance in which most people no longer have to worry about money, new technologies have contributed to a two-tiered society comprising a few with extraordinary wealth and a vast number of people barely making it.<\/p>\n

AI is likely to further widen inequality.<\/p>\n

Imagine a small box \u2013 call it an iEverything \u2013 capable of producing for you everything you could possibly desire. It\u2019s a modern-day Aladdin\u2019s lamp. You simply tell it what you want and \u2013 presto! \u2013the item or service suddenly appears.<\/p>\n

Sounds wonderful until you realize that no one will be able to buy the iEverything because no one will have any means of earning money, since the iEverything will do everything.<\/p>\n

This is obviously fanciful, but the dilemma is very real. Productivity gains are great, but the too-little-discussed question is how they will be distributed.<\/p>\n

The distribution issue can\u2019t be ignored. When more can be done by fewer people, who gets paid what? It comes down to who has the power.<\/p>\n

Unless workers have the power to demand a share in the productivity gains, profits will go to an ever-smaller circle of owners \u2013 leaving the rest of us with less money to buy what can be produced.<\/p>\n

If the five-day workweek with five days of pay shrinks to four days with four days of pay, and then to three, and to two, and perhaps one, AI will supplant most people\u2019s work and drive down our take-home pay. We may see a dazzling array of products and services spawned by AI, but few of us will be able to buy them.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t necessarily our fate. If AI does deliver big productivity gains, how can average working people get a share of those gains? They can get a share if they have the bargaining power to get it.<\/p>\n

It seems doubtful that labor unions will provide that power. Forty years ago, over a third of the private-sector workforce was unionized. Now, it\u2019s only 6% \u2013 not much power there.<\/p>\n

Which leaves politics. Will average working people gain the political muscle to demand a share of AI\u2019s productivity gains?<\/p>\n

That depends on whether one of our two dominant political parties will demand and enact laws that distribute those gains more fairly (think wealth taxes financing childcare, elder care, and healthcare, for example).<\/p>\n

If not, maybe a third party emerges \u2013 a workers\u2019 party \u2013 dedicated to this?<\/p>\n

In the meantime, don\u2019t fall for the breathless rubbish about AI allowing employers to \u201cfree up\u201d employees\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

The real question is whether AI\u2019s productivity gains, if it delivers, are shared with workers. And the truth is employers won\u2019t share those gains unless they\u2019re forced to.<\/p>\n

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com<\/a>. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The front-page headline in a recent Washington Post was breathless: \u201cThese companies say AI is key to their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-488169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}