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The 3.5-Day Workweek
This week, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of the largest bank in America, went on Bloomberg TV and told Americans that artificial intelligence will lead to working no more than 3.5 days per week.
The JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO said a lot of other positive things about artificial intelligence, including the fact that it supposedly will cure cancer. Dimon is not the first to promise a revolution that will lead to fewer work hours. Time magazine declared 2023 the “year of the 4-day workweek.” Tim Ferriss’ book “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich” is a perennial best seller. A self-employed programmer sent me a copy of the book years ago. He kept track of his work hours on a spreadsheet that boasted no more than 2 hours per week. Presumably, he felt sorry for me when I told him I was working full time.
I’m not quite sure why AI would lead to a 3.5-day workweek. Perhaps people lose their jobs and that’s all the hours they can scrounge up in the gig economy.
While no one can be certain how AI will transform our lives, what does seem clear is that job loss is a given. An April McKinsey & Co. survey with 1,684 corporate responses found 45% expect their organizations to have fewer staff in the next three years based on AI’s impact. Fifteen percent expect their workforces to increase because of AI. Goldman Sachs Group has estimated 300 million jobs globally could be impacted by AI; in the U.S. and Europe, up to a quarter of all work could be done by AI. Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, which created the popular generative AI tool called ChatGPT, told The Atlantic that “jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.”
Banking and other industries are already using the technology — or their vendors are — to streamline operations, catch fraud, speed up payments processing and much more. This is a good thing. Increases in efficiency could boost gross domestic product. Previous technological transformations in history shifted jobs away from places like the farm to manufacturing, and from manufacturing to the office. There’s a possibility that could happen this time, too. But it’s not a given.
• Naomi Snyder, editor-in-chief for Bank Director
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