AI will not give you Fridays off

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote one of the most optimistic predictions in the history of economics.

Thanks to technology and rising productivity, he argued, future generations would work no more than 15 hours a week.

They would have so much leisure time they would barely know what to do with it.

Keynes was one of the most brilliant economic minds of the twentieth century.

He was also spectacularly wrong on this question.

In 1950, Americans averaged 38 hours a week.

Today, we average 34.

Nearly a century of technological progress, from electrification to the PC to the internet to the cloud, moved the needle by four hours.

I have been researching the four-day workweek for seven years, tracking pilots across Iceland, Japan, the UK, Australia, and the U.S.

In 2018, I led one of the largest global studies on working hours conducted at the time, surveying 3,000 employees across eight countries including the United States, Britain, and Germany.

What we found was telling: 45% of workers believed they could easily finish their tasks in five hours a day without interruptions, but many were exceeding 40 hours a week anyway, with the United States leading the way, where 49% said they regularly worked overtime.

Workers were not burning through those extra hours because the work demanded it.

They were filling time, managing appearances, and absorbing the inefficiencies that long workweeks encourage.

So when I heard Jamie Dimon predict that AI will usher in a four or three-and-a-half-day workweek within a few decades, or Anthony Scaramucci declare we are moving to a three or four-day week in our lifetimes, or Bill Gates float the idea of a two-day workweek powered by AI abundance, I understand the optimism.