A four-day week? Soon, thanks to AI, we may not work at all

The world of work is in a state of flux. JP Morgan is ordering its staff back into the office five days a week, resulting in a hunt for extra space to accommodate the 14,000 desks needed at its London Canary Wharf headquarters. Amazon has taken the same line. Meta, Starbucks and Dell are also moving against remote working and WFH.

But Citigroup has said most of its employees can work remotely two days a week, and is refitting its £1bn Canary Wharf building.

Meanwhile, 12 Labour MPs (and one Green) are pressing for an amendment to the Employment Rights Bill, currently wending its way through parliament, for a four-day week to become law. At the same time, the universal basic income (UBI) movement is gaining traction; this is the idea of a no-strings-attached payment made regularly to everyone in society. Trials are taking place all over the globe, including in Ireland and Scotland. A pilot will soon be launched, in Jarrow and Finchley, that will see people receive £1600 a month for doing precisely nothing. The effect it has on their health and wellbeing, and whether they choose to do additional work, will be monitored.

UBI is not new: the concept has been mooted since Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516. It’s being given a modern dusting as a possible solution to the advance of AI. Among its leading proponents is Andy Burnham. The mayor of Greater Manchester argues it could serve as an antidote to technology’s onslaught and, by improving people’s lives, could save the government money by reducing social harm. Indeed, one trial showed that recipients were more likely to develop startup businesses and less likely to get divorced.

This week, delegates at the Paris AI summit met against a backdrop of predictions that the technology will surpass human capabilities “in almost everything” within two to three years. Already, it’s estimated that, in the first year of ChatGPT, 14 per cent of Americans lost their jobs to robots. Elon Musk is saying the biggest threat to AI will come not from what it can do, but from governments reeling at the effects of wholesale unemployment. That does not stop him from also sharing that, in the future, a job will be for “personal satisfaction”.

Goldman Sachs reckons as many as 300 million posts will disappear. This is the same Goldman Sachs that has abandoned its own hybrid attendance policy implemented during the pandemic and issued a full return-to-office mandate. It’s also in an area – banking – that is in the crosshairs of AI. Previously, it was supposed that dirty or physical jobs were at most risk from tech; now it’s thought the target is the middle-class professions of law, medicine, and banking and finance.

We’re clearly stuck at a crossroads, uncertain of the route forward. How long we will be here remains to be seen.

There are benefits and flaws with the different propositions. WFH is thought to be better for work-life balance; it improves mental health, removes the stress of commuting (as well as saving the time wasted in transit), and staff are said to work more efficiently. Employers are able to save money by not requiring such large premises. That’s the view, although the evidence is apocryphal and not scientific.

Against that, critics maintain that WFH encourages shirking, reduces spontaneity and creativity, and increases a sense of isolation, reducing opportunities for collegiality and mentoring. Similarly, all circumstantial.

A four-day week has similar benefits and drawbacks. On the downside, it’s enshrining in statute the notion of a slower fifth day that exists in many workplaces anyway, and what it will achieve is to make Thursday, not Friday, that more relaxed day. Quite how shorter hours will secure greater economic growth – a requisite of this government – those Labour supporters have yet to explain. They prefer to dwell on how it’s needed because AI will reduce employment.

But if true, it’s hard to see how four days will be any more of a safeguard than five. That’s where UBI comes in and says “To hell with it, here’s some cash to help compensate for the lot – you no longer need to work.” But what should be its value? What is enough in the northeast of England may not be anything like enough in north London. And who will pay for it? While some will enjoy UBI, there must still be sufficient numbers in paid employment, paying the taxes that will fund it.

To say that governments, employers, do not know where to turn is an understatement. They sense change is coming; it’s not here yet. But they’re not sure what form it will take, or how extensive it will be. Some are focusing on the present, weighing which working patterns they believe to be right.

Nothing is certain. The future of employment is occupying a similar space to climate change: something is happening, but we’ve got little idea of what the effects will be, or whether it will be slow and incremental or advance in a rush.

That equates to frustration. All the folk who gather at events such as Emmanuel Macron’s AI fest, with their smart software and algorithms, and like to forecast yesterday what will occur tomorrow, are nowhere near agreement.

The result is fragmentation: practices adopted here and not there; policies enthusiastically supported and equally scorned.

Utopia also advocated a ban on private property; goods being stored in warehouses, with people requesting what they need; no locks on the doors of houses; and citizens switching homes every 10 years. Every person on More’s fictional island had to learn an essential trade, and they wore similar, simple clothes. They were each paid the same, but they were all expected to work. There were free hospitals, and meals were eaten in community dining halls. What he was satirising writ large was monastic life, in which everyone lived happily.

Utopia or dystopia? If anyone has the answer, we’re ready to hear it.