- Published
For years now, executives at companies that are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars a year into developing various artificial intelligence tools have insisted that the technology will ultimately mean people will spend less of their time working.
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people → publish → time
An engineering director at Google said four years ago that AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025, external.
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AI → say → 2025
Earlier this year, and just one year after that engineering director's prediction, OpenAI took up the challenge, in a manner of speaking.
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OpenAI → take → speaking
It formally urged companies to start testing out a four-day work week (with no change in pay), claiming that AI will soon be able to speed up so much human labour that the corporate world should prepare itself.
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world → urge → itself
However, a former OpenAI technical employee who left the company last year told the BBC the firm never actually trialled the four-day work week it suggested others should try while they were there.
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they → leave → week
Instead, the person described what was often a gruelling work culture marked by frequent "crisis meetings", working on weekends, and "super cut-throat" performance reviews that would see colleagues suddenly let go.
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colleagues → describe → weekends
"You go in on Saturday or Sunday just to catch up or make sure things aren't broken," the person said.
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person → go → Saturday
Other companies have also pushed the idea that AI will effectively reduce the number of hours people need to work, for better or worse.
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people → push → hours
Anthropic has boasted that its popular coding tool and chatbot Claude is capable of working on its own for seven hours without a break, external, essentially a full corporate workday.
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tool → boast → break
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has said his company is in the middle of the year when "AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work" and that such tools let far fewer employees do more than they ever could have before.
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they → say → more
While Meta has since laid off 1 in 10 of its employees, Anthropic's chief executive Dario Amodei has warned that as AI tools inevitably become more productive, it could mean, external even broader job losses.
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it → lay → losses
Despite these claims, workers inside these same tech companies, who are not only developing but using the very AI tools that will purportedly perform at least some of people's work, say they are clocking in far more than the typical five-day, 40-hour work week.
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they → develop → week
'Sprints'
US tech workers are typically well-compensated, external, and while other industries such as investment banking, law and medicine also often see people work long hours, a 14-hour workday was not always the norm in tech.
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workday → compensate → tech
But the former OpenAI employee said they would put in at least 70 hours a week, much more than they did in previous tech jobs.
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they → say → jobs
The person now works at a start-up also focused on AI, and said their work-life balance has improved, working closer to 50-60 hours a week, "outside of sprints".
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balance → work → sprints
A "sprint" is term for a common period in technology companies in which people work long hours in the weeks leading up to a release of a new feature or product.
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people → work → feature
Inside AI companies and larger tech companies working furiously on AI projects, however, such sprints can be extreme.
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sprints → work → projects
At OpenAI and Anthropic, for instance, sprints can stretch on for many weeks and top 90 hours of work in a seven-day period, tech workers that the BBC spoke to for this story said.
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BBC → stretch → story
Neither company responded to BBC requests for comment.
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company → respond → comment
Being 'drafted'
At Meta, workers said they have been abruptly pushed onto teams this year doing AI work being treated as urgent.
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they → draft → work
They called it being "drafted", according to one current and one former employee, because people were not given a choice.
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people → call → choice
"They just move you over," the former employee said.
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employee → move → you
"You can't say no – or if you do, you have to quit."
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you → say → ?
They said although Meta recently began to walk back, external that strict take it or leave us approach, by then many workers had already been forced onto such work.
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workers → say → work
The hours on such teams at Meta are often long, with staff working into the night, on weekends, and feeling they are "on call" during the hours they are not working, according to descriptions of the work from the current and former employees.
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they → work → employees
There are no limits, external in the US on how many hours a person over the age of 16 can work.
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person → be → 16
In the UK and Europe, for instance, laws limit a working week to 48 hours, including overtime.
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laws → limit → overtime
Meta's current AI projects include the creation of an AI tool that can be used for software engineering and other kinds of work, and building AI model infrastructure that can measure an AI model's success in replicating various tasks, the employees added.
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employees → include → tasks
"You're literally working in teams of people trying to replicate humans doing jobs," the former employee said.
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employee → work → jobs
That work, the person added, seems "endless".
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person → add → ?
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.
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spokesperson → decline → ?
Even tech workers who are not directly involved in the development of AI tools are facing longer hours due to the technology.
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who → involve → technology
A former Google employee, Amin Shali, left the company in May due to the ways in which he claimed AI was negatively impacting his job, like having to often work all hours of the night because internal engineering functions had failed.
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functions → leave → night
This was happening more frequently as Google moved crucial resources like processing units and memory storage over to AI projects.
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Google → happen → projects
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
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spokesperson → decline → ?
Since leaving Google, Shali told the BBC that his sleep and overall health had improved.
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sleep → leave → BBC
He said he's realised that heavy reliance on AI tools in large tech companies "creates a bad culture with excess pressure on engineers".
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reliance → say → engineers
Time savings 'sucked up'
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savings → suck → ?
Some new research suggests that AI tools are making people's workloads even more burdensome.
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workloads → suggest → ?
A study, external out of UC Berkeley followed hundreds of workers at a US tech company for eight months as they used AI.
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they → follow → AI
…and 9 more, not listed.
