AI and the four-day work week
Commentary on AI and the four-day work week often underestimates the point made in the famous poem by William Carlos Williams called “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
In the latest example I read from an analyst I like, Dror Poleg, I found a similar refrain: AI is going to automate away so many jobs and make work meaningless, we should work less anyway, let’s do a four-day work week instead.
What’s overlooked, aside from what you’ll read below, is that “work” and “meaning” are never defined. What do you mean “work”? Paid employment? Poleg mentions that with less work we’re able to consume more. Fine, but who will pay for that consumption? Who will make the things we consume? How is consumption any more meaningful than work? And we think humans will all of a sudden just stop doing productive activity? Will that not deprive them of the meaning and dignity that work provides? I’m not sure where commentators are going without addressing some very basic but important questions.
What’s even more overlooked is how much depends upon a wheelbarrow. The difference with Poleg’s latest piece, “God, AI, and the Scalable Class,” is that the writer invoked the Celestial Creator, and your humble correspondent couldn’t resist the temptation to reply.
Dror,
I’ve always enjoyed your writing. I have an MA in biblical studies and an MBA in finance, so this one was particularly interesting. Given this topic, I’d love your take on three things:
First, Jews know that God worked for six days and rested for one, creating a template for humans to follow. Work is demanded of us and it’s also our delight. Work will never go away.
Second, this and many other commentaries sound much like Keynes in the 1930s, that 100 years hence we’ll work only 15 hours. How wrong he was.
Third, and most important, discussion on four-day work weeks often underestimates how much of an advanced economy simply can’t take a day off—manufacturing, healthcare, law, finance, etc. Further, a lot of work even in an advanced economy can’t be completed by software alone: Less than 20% of the US labor force comprises information, finance, and professional and business services, those who presumably use software as a major function of their job.
The computers we’re typing on, our pediatrician visit next week, the food I’ll eat for breakfast—none of this can be served or made without a human being putting hand to plough. I’d also like to see someone be told, in the midst of a tough legal case for example, “Sorry, but I don’t work on Fridays.” Or perhaps when their child happens to be sick on Friday but the doctor’s office is closed. Or when cars become 15% more expensive because the factory is closed on Friday.
Of course, the whole doctor’s office or factory doesn’t have to close down. But if we reorder workers’ schedules for them to take off a day without a commensurate cut in pay while adding a shift to someone else, how is this beneficial to the consumer? As Friedman pointed out fifty years ago, our visions of social good are a tax on someone, whether the employee, the customer, or the shareholder.
I’ve read a lot about these issues—AI, four-day work weeks, centralization of the elite, etc.—but I haven’t seen much commentary that tackles these difficult but basic cases.
Thank you,
Brandon