We used to dream that AI would do all the boring stuff so we could pursue our artistic endeavors.

Turns out it's the opposite lol. There will be no days off for us.

Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

—Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness, 1935

Let's make anything over 32 hours double pay.

2 day work week. Standard hours for a work week are just like the minimum wage. They've been stagnant for decades and haven't adjusted according to company profits and worker productivity increases.

2 days. Why would you ask for 4? That puts you in a shitty bargaining position.

Studies show productivity has a sharp drop off after 6 hours iirc

Human productivity alone warranted a 4-day workweek. With AI benefits added in, we should be going down to 3.

I think the plan is that a lot of people get a 0 day work week. That's one of the problems.

We could have done this 150 years ago when oil gave us 100 times more energy back than it took to extract it.

Humans are a defective species, we must see others suffer.

Pfff that's coward numbers. I'll do you one better:

We should get a 3-day work week.

Jevons Paradox

Manager: You're right! AI Makes me as productive as half my team, so I'm firing half of them AND working a 4 day work week!

Meanwhile, in Germany: There are a lot of unemployed people, and there are a lot of people who want a four-day week, so what we desperately need is working longer hours.

Interesting that the article never cites or states how much AI has improved productivity - but rather focuses on the 4-day work week. Kinda strange to only look at the end outcome and ignore the cause of expecting that outcome.