In recent years, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and billionaire Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates have all stated the same prediction: The workweek will soon get shorter. They contend that mundane jobs will be automated, freeing up workers’ time and advancing the idea of a four-day workweek. A two-day workweek has even been suggested by Gates.
However, International Workplace Group (IWG) CEO and founder Mark Dixon doesn’t think so. From his perspective, managing the largest flexible office supplier in the world, with over 8 million users in 122 countries and 85% of Fortune 500 clients, the numbers don’t stack up.
“No time soon, everyone is focused on productivity,” declares Dixon bluntly.
“It has to do with labor costs,” Dixon tells Fortune. There are major cost-of-living issues in the United States and the United Kingdom. He claims that firms are going through a “cost of operating crisis” at the same time.
“Everyone has to control their labor costs because all costs have increased so much, and you have to get more out of people because you can’t get any more money from customers.”
In essence, businesses cannot afford to pay employees the same rates for fewer hours worked, and they are unable to pass the difference on to clients. Therefore, any time that is “freed” by automation is far more likely to be used for new activities rather than being returned to employees.
Elon Musk claims that labor will become optional in the future, but this CEO believes AI may actually increase rather than decrease employment.
The most powerful voices in Silicon Valley portray AI as a path to more leisure. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and the founder of Space X, Tesla, and X, has even gone so far as to say that in as little as ten years, employment will be entirely “optional” and more akin to a hobby.
In actuality, Dixon contends that this situation would only arise in the event that there is a shortage of jobs rather than when bosses suddenly show compassion. However, he believes that AI will probably produce more work rather than reducing it.
He contends that every significant technical change has followed a similar pattern: a fear of displacement followed by an increase in opportunities.
“AI will accelerate business development, so there will be more work—it will just be different work,” he claims.
Dixon describes how, during the Industrial Revolution, English textile workers in 19th-century Britain protested against new automated technology because they believed it would endanger their livelihoods, reduce salaries, and de-skill their craft. They were known as Luddites.
“To halt progress, they went around the nation breaking up the looms. Ultimately, though, you have heard of the Industrial Revolution. That was the result of factory manufacturing and those looms. Retail expanded as mass manufacturing increased the availability of commodities; The middle class expanded, more managers were required to supervise the machines, and so on.
When computers initially became popular in the 1980s, there was a comparable tangible terror. The 1996 book Women and Computers described how individuals felt hostile toward computers and feared becoming “slaves” to them.
However, rather than completely vanishing, the majority of occupations have seen a digital rebranding since the proliferation of the PC (and subsequently the internet, the Cloud, social media, and so on).
Designers now use Adobe Photoshop rather than a pen and paper, copywriters use laptops instead of typewriters, and several IT jobs were generated in the process.
Dixon comes to the conclusion, “Progress cannot be stopped.”
“Companies must do what they must, and it is critical for young people entering the workforce to work a little harder on choosing the appropriate occupations, the proper path, and acquiring additional skills in areas such as artificial intelligence. Whatever career you choose, you must be technically proficient.”
