The front page headline in the Washington Post recently was breathless: “These companies say AI is key to their four-day workweek.The subtitle was upbeat: “Some companies are giving workers more time off as artificial intelligence takes over more tasks.”
In form of Post Explained: “As more companies may move toward shorter work weeks, many Executives and researchers predict that’s because workers, especially the younger generation, will continue to strive for a better work-life balance.”
Hooray! AI is utopia at the end of the rainbow! A better work-life balance!
You may have found similar articles fortune magazine And The New York Times. The AI spin brigade is in full force.
Business leaders are discussing how AI will free up their employees to take more time off. Zoom’s Eric Yuan told Times That “AI can improve the lives of all of us, why do we need to work five days a week? Every company will work three days, four days a week. I think this ultimately saves everyone’s time.”
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, They say Advanced technology can reduce the workweek to just three and a half days. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates openly wonders whether a two day The workweek may be the future.
Elon Musk takes the idea forward To the extreme (as he does everything else): “In less than 20 years – but probably less than 10 or 15 years – advances in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional.” Even better: “There will be no poverty in the future and therefore no need to save money,” They say Musk. “There will be universal higher incomes.”
This is all pure nonsense. Even if AI produces large productivity gains – that is still an open question (a). mit study found last year that “despite $30-40 billion in venture investment in GenAI, 95% of organizations are getting zero returns”) – it’s not clear that workers will get much, if any, benefit.
If productivity increases, as it should when the workplace is immersed in AI, by definition, each employee will generate more value. And with supposedly higher prices, we’re all better off.
Workers’ productivity has been rising for years, yet average wages have barely budged when adjusted for inflation.
Here’s the truth: A four-day workweek will likely come with four days’ pay. A three-day workweek, with three days worth. And so on.
Therefore, as AI takes over their existing jobs, most workers will likely become poorer or have to take on additional jobs to maintain their current wages.
In his 1930 essay Economic prospects for our grandchildren, The great British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century, “the discovery of means of making the use of labor economical” would outpace our ability to “find new uses of labor.” In other words, less work.
Keynes was convinced that by 2030 the “standard of living” in Europe and the United States would be so improved by technology that no one would have to worry about making money. Productivity gains will create an era of abundance.
In fact, by 2030, he predicted, our biggest problem will be how to use all our free time:
“For the first time since his creation man will face his real, permanent problem – how to use his freedom from economic concerns, how to use the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live intelligently and agreeably and well.”
We are still five years away from Keynes’ magical years, but at the rate we are moving, his predictions seem wildly wrong.
Rather than creating an era of abundance in which most people no longer have to worry about money, new technologies have contributed to a two-tier society consisting of a few people with extraordinary wealth and a large number of people barely earning it.
AI is likely to further increase inequality.
Imagine a little box – call it iEverything – that is able to create for you everything you could possibly want. This is a modern day Aladdin’s lamp. You just tell it what you want and – presto! -The good or service appears suddenly.
This sounds wonderful until you realize that no one will be able to buy iEverything because no one will have any means of making money, because iEverything will do everything.
This is obviously hypothetical, but the dilemma is very real. Productivity gains are great, but a much less discussed question is how they will be delivered.
The issue of distribution cannot be ignored. When more work can be done by fewer people, who gets paid how much? It depends on who has the power.
Unless workers have the power to demand a share in productivity gains, profits will flow to a smaller group of owners – leaving the rest of us with less money to buy what is produced.
If the five-day workweek with five days’ pay shrinks to four days with four days’ pay, and then to three, and two, and maybe one, then AI will replace most people’s work and reduce our take-home pay. We may see a dazzling array of products and services generated by AI, but only a few of us will be able to purchase them.
But this is not necessarily our fate. If AI delivers huge productivity gains, how can average working people get a share of those benefits? They can get a share if they have the bargaining power to get it.
It seems doubtful that labor unions will provide that power. Forty years ago, more than a third of the private sector workforce was unionized. Now, it’s only 6% – not a lot of power there.
Who leaves politics. Will average working people gain the political power to demand a share of AI’s productivity?
It depends on whether one of our two major political parties will demand and enact laws that distribute those benefits more fairly (for example, think of a wealth tax to finance child care, elder care, and health care).
If not, might a third party emerge – a labor party – dedicated to this?
In the meantime, don’t fall for the absurd nonsense about AI allowing employers to “free up” employees’ time.
The real question is whether the productivity gains of AI, if it does deliver, are shared with workers. And the truth is that employers won’t share those benefits unless they’re forced to.
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Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is here robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now.
