Štítek: AI

A Four-Day Workweek Should Have Been the Global Standard Already

Let’s be honest: the way we work today is not normal.
It’s a historical relic, a biological mistake, and a moral failure.

The eight-hour workday was a huge victory—more than a century ago. In the age of factories, smoke, assembly lines, and children working in mines, reducing work from 12 or 14 hours a day was a triumph of human dignity. People fought for it, and rightly so.

But then we froze in time.

The world changed. Technology exploded. Productivity skyrocketed. And we stayed exactly where we were. Most people don’t actually work eight hours anymore anyway. They work nine, ten, sometimes twelve, once you count commuting, late-night emails, constant availability, and the mental exhaustion that follows them home.

This isn’t progress.
It’s inertia disguised as work ethic.

Humans Were Never Designed for This

For most of human history, people did not spend their days locked into continuous labor. Anthropological research suggests that hunter-gatherers often met their basic needs with just a few hours of work per day. The rest of the time, they lived: they moved, socialized, rested, thought.

Then came agriculture.
Then industry.
Then the information economy.

And with each step, we started working more, not less. Not because we had to, but because our systems forgot how to stop.

Sitting All Day Is a Biological Error

Sitting all day is fundamentally unnatural. There’s no polite way to say it.

The human body is not built for eight hours in a chair, staring at a screen, under artificial light, breathing recycled air, barely moving, constantly switching attention. Prolonged sitting is linked to heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, depression, and premature death. And no, going to the gym after work does not fully undo the damage.

Add to that constant screen exposure, poor posture, and climate-controlled environments that ignore natural light and airflow, and we’ve engineered a daily routine that quietly works against human health.

This isn’t about comfort.
It’s about public health.

Working Less Actually Works

And here’s the part that really matters: we already know a better system works.

Whenever the four-day workweek is tested, the results repeat themselves. Productivity stays the same or improves. Stress drops. Burnout declines. Sick days decrease. Employee retention goes up.

Over and over again, the same lesson emerges: exhausted people are not effective people.

Working fewer hours doesn’t mean doing less.
It means doing what actually matters.

AI Removes the Last Excuse

Artificial intelligence removes the last remaining excuse.

Machines are increasingly able to do routine work faster and cheaper than humans. This can either become the greatest liberation in human history—or the greatest concentration of wealth and power we’ve ever seen.

Either the gains go to a small group at the top, or we collectively decide to shorten the workweek for everyone. Technology was supposed to free us. Instead, we used it to keep ourselves permanently online.

This Is a Moral Question, Not an Economic One

The real question isn’t whether we can afford to work less.
It’s why we’re still willing to accept a system that drains people of time, energy, health, and meaning.

Why do we consider it normal that people barely see their children during the week? That they have no energy for relationships? That evenings are spent in a fog of fatigue? That so much of life is consumed by work that is often pointless?

A four-day workweek.
A six-hour day. Maybe even four.
A ban on unnecessary night shifts.
Ergonomics as a standard, not a perk.

These are not radical demands.
They are the baseline of a modern, humane society.

Nothing Changes Unless We Demand It

Working hours have never been reduced because elites suddenly felt generous. Every meaningful change happened because people organized, applied pressure, and refused to accept the status quo.

Progress has never come from waiting politely.

The four-day workweek isn’t a fantasy.
It’s an overdue update to a system that no longer matches reality.

And every year we delay, we lose something we can never get back.

Our time.

But What If We Truly Could Live Almost Forever?

Just imagine.
In the 20th century, we doubled the length of human life. Maybe we could do it again. But thanks to AI, not in a century—rather in a decade. Exponentially. Over and over again.

That thought alone feels almost unreal.

In fact, it was a text by Dario Amodei that pushed me to seriously think about this. He argues that AI-enabled biology and medicine could radically compress scientific progress:

In other words: what normally takes a lifetime of research might soon take just a few years.

“My basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50–100 years into 5–10 years. I’ll refer to this as the ‘compressed 21st century’.”

And when you look at life expectancy, the numbers suddenly stop feeling so crazy.

As Amodei also writes:

“This might seem radical, but life expectancy increased almost 2x in the 20th century (from ~40 years to ~75), so it’s ‘on trend’ that the ‘compressed 21st’ would double it again to 150.”

A Compressed Century

So let’s count.

If human life expectancy went from roughly 40 years to around 75 in the 20th century, doubling it again puts us somewhere near 150 years.

And not in the year 2100—but possibly within the next decade or two.

If powerful AI continues to improve, this progress likely wouldn’t stop there. One medical breakthrough would quickly lead to another. Aging itself might become something we continuously push back, slow down, or partially reverse.

We might not just live longer. We might stay younger.

That sounds like science fiction. Maybe fantasy. But there are already living organisms on Earth that live hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years. Yes, their biology is very different from ours—but for the first time in history, we are seriously talking about changing our own.

Better cells. Repaired DNA. Bodies that don’t inevitably fall apart.

And that’s where things stop being just exciting—and start being complicated.

What If We Stopped Dying?

The real question isn’t only can we live almost forever.
It’s what happens if we do.

What happens to Earth if people stop dying?

Today, we worry about demographic decline. About not having enough babies. About aging populations and shrinking societies. But what if the problem flipped?

What if people stayed healthy and young for much longer—and could have children not only in their 50s, 60s, or 70s, as already happens today—but far later?

Someone could decide in their 120s, 250s, or even 500s that they are finally bored with single life, done with casual dating, and want to settle down.

Other people wouldn’t have just two kids. Or three. Or five. They could have 20, 50, or 100 children—spread across centuries.

From today’s perspective, that sounds absurd. But so did the internet. So did in vitro fertilization. So did a global pandemic that shut down the entire world.

Crazy times usually feel crazy mainly because we’re standing inside them.

Maybe this, too, would become a new normal—sooner than we expect.

So the question is, my fellow human:

What would you actually do with your life if you could live almost forever?

  • How many books would you finally read—or write?
  • Would you live faster, trying everything, or slower, knowing there’s no rush?
  • How wisely would you invest your money if time worked in centuries, not decades?
  • How many different jobs or careers would you try?
  • How many new fields or disciplines would you want to study?
  • How many life partners would you have over hundreds of years?
  • How many children would feel meaningful?
  • How many planets would you want to visit?
  • And how would you make sure you remember any of it—or decide what to forget?

Two Futures, Both Possible

Right now, we can barely imagine how extraordinary the future ahead of us might be.

Or maybe we’ll fail. Maybe we’ll build something we don’t fully understand. Maybe we’ll lose control. Maybe we’ll let AI destroy us—and we’ll all be dead by 2035.

Both futures feel disturbingly plausible.

A near-endless life wouldn’t just change how long we live. It would quietly rewrite what love, ambition, boredom, and meaning even are.

What We Can Do Now

But before—or if ever—AI makes this a reality, we can already take inspiration from people who live longer and healthier lives today.

From places like the Blue Zones, where people routinely live past 100.

Or from modern longevity protocols focused on movement, nutrition, sleep, and mental health.

Even without radical technology, we can already live better.

And if one day we truly gain more time, the question won’t just be how long we live—but whether we’ve learned how to use it.

How We’ll Make a Living When AI Does All the Work

If AI is not just another technology that replaces some jobs while many new ones are created, then we will need a new economic model.

Quite possibly, AI itself will invent and implement such a model. But until it does, let us invent and implement it as humans. It is high time.

It is quite possible that we will not need to replace our current market-capitalist model with a social role of the state at all.

Let us imagine a world in which AI (together with physical robots) can already perform all human work better than any human. And more cheaply. Quite simply, as humans we will no longer be market-competitive.

We may even prefer that some work continues to be done by humans.

But for that to be possible, we must figure out how to finance it. How to ensure that broad segments of society can obtain income and wealth from something other than their non-competitive labor.

Several options present themselves, and we should consider the pros and cons of each and possibly combine them.

UBI

One option is the classic unconditional universal basic income. It would probably be appropriate for it to come from both global and national taxes.

UHI

Another is the newly discussed universal high income — for example, so that every person on the planet could live as well as today’s upper middle class in the United States or Western Europe.

This would, however, require significantly more sustainable use of resources. But AI may also help us solve this problem.

Wealth and income inequalities would still exist. Not everyone can have a seafront apartment overlooking the ocean.

Conditional income

Perhaps there should also be an additional bonus in the form of conditional income. For example, people who engage in lifelong learning, volunteer work, participate in elections, attend regular preventive health checkups, and so on would receive additional bonus income.

This can be controversial, so such a feature should be subject to broad social and political discussion, democratic decision-making, and ongoing reassessment.

Valuing meaningful work

Another option is the creation of essentially artificial or subsidized jobs based on meaningful work for others.

These positions could also have significantly shorter working hours, for example 3–4 days a week, 4–6 hours a day. They would be important roles in public administration, politics, local and regional government, the nonprofit sector, foundations, and similar areas.

Mass entrepreneurship

Quite possibly, many people could also become entrepreneurs thanks to AI. They would simply create an AI agent that acts as the CEO of other AI agents, which together would run their company or companies.

Micro-businesses with a story

People could also start opening small businesses that are passion projects and would be non-competitive in today’s market environment. But their goal would no longer be to support the owner and employees or to generate profit.

The goal would be local businesses built on relationships with customers — small bookstores, restaurants, cafés, and so on. The primary workers could easily be robots, while the owner would show up mainly to build relationships with customers.

Mass investing

Likewise, many people could obtain income from investing carried out by investment funds managed by top-tier AI agents. We would all receive dividends, and immediately.

At the same time, such investment funds would be established for every person at birth. The state would contribute regularly. Parents too. People would not have to wait for retirement; they would have investment income already in adulthood.

The welfare state

In addition to all this, we could still have a traditional welfare state with a range of social benefits and public pensions.

Of course, all of this assumes that we manage to tax the wealth generated by AI far more effectively and fairly.

An aristocratic life for everyone

The near future with AI will very likely be either one where the masses survive in hopeless poverty, or one of nearly unlimited and continuously growing prosperity — prosperity people may help create themselves, but will not be required to.

In short, we can create a world in which an aristocratic life is finally possible — this time for everyone. The meaning of life in such a world is another topic, though.