Artificial intelligence was supposed to lighten the load. Executives have spent the past two years describing it as a technology that will give people back their time, turning drudgery into creativity and workweeks into long weekends. “Every company will support three days, four days a week,” Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, told The New York Times in September 2025. “I think this ultimately frees up everyone’s time.”
Across the corporate spectrum, the idea has become a symbol of progress. Bill Gates has envisioned a future where AI enables three-day workweeks; Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has said the industrial revolution’s next act will “probably” lead companies toward shorter schedules. Jamie Dimon and Bernie Sanders are rarely on the same side of a debate and have both said that technology’s next test is whether it can finally turn productivity into leisure.
Yet in 2025, as AI tools infiltrate every corner of the economy, two very different realities have emerged. In large enterprises, automation is trimming redundant labor and, in some cases, cutting the workweek to four days. But in Silicon Valley’s AI startup scene, the opposite is true: the more intelligent the tools become, the harder people seem to work.
