AI will bring about a 4-day work week

Will AI bring about a 4-day work week? Altman: The higher the productivity, the busier people are. According to "Business Insider" report, in the view of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (Sam Altman), AI will not usher in a golden age of four-day work weeks. In an interview with host Ti Morse on the "Relentless" podcast that aired last Saturday, Altman talked about why AI has not shortened most people's working hours. Altman "Technology has long promised people that they would work less and have more leisure time," Altman said. He noted that this trend is indeed already occurring to some extent, with people having more leisure time and a higher quality of life than at any time in history. "But somehow we have never been able to realize the promise of the '4-hour work week' on a large scale in society," he said, "and I don't think AI will change that." The four-hour work week is a modern workplace and lifestyle concept derived from the best-selling book of the same name by American writer Timothy Ferriss, "The 4-Hour Work Week." Its core meaning is not to literally work only 4 hours a week, but to control your own time and life through extremely high time efficiency. Altman said that as AI drives productivity improvements, people's expectations of themselves are also constantly increasing. "We always want more. We come up with new things to do, create new things for each other, and create new needs. It's like a relative competition. People are very concerned about how they perform relative to other people," Altman said. He said competition drives economic development and this competition will not stop. "I think that after the superintelligence era, we will all be much busier than we think. We will still complain about it, but secretly we will enjoy it." Altman said. The four-day work week is a concept that emerged in the wake of the pandemic to alleviate employee burnout and give employees greater flexibility in their work schedules. In 2023, "Business Insider" interviewed some small businesses. These companies say that switching to this work model has boosted employee morale and increased productivity. However, as corporate executives tighten their mandate to return to the office five days a week and promote the infamous "996" work culture (that is, working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week), the dream of a four-day work week is becoming increasingly distant. In the same interview, Altman also shared a rather severe judgment on the development of AI. He said: "We are now, to some extent, already in the singularity." The so-called "singularity" refers to the point where AI surpasses human intelligence and begins to develop out of control.