Four-Day Week Promise: AI Giants Contradict Rhetoric with 90-Hour Workweeks

While leaders at tech giants like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta promise that artificial intelligence would reduce human working hours, the reality in those companies' offices is vastly different. A Google engineer predicted in 2022 that the four-day week would become reality by 2025. OpenAI has also publicly promoted implementing four-day work weeks without salary reduction, arguing that AI would significantly boost productivity. However, investigations reveal that OpenAI employees frequently work 70 hours or more per week, facing "crisis meetings," weekend work, and extremely rigorous performance reviews. Research from the University of California, Berkeley tracked hundreds of employees over eight months and found that AI usage resulted in increased work pace, broader task scope, and longer working days. Studies indicate that time saved by AI is frequently refilled with new tasks, reports, and quality checks, rather than resulting in actual rest hours.