The hope was that AI would help us finish our work faster and spend less time working. Yet some AI startups have embraced 9-9-6: nine in the morning to nine at night, six days a week. (WIRED) That alone doesn’t tell us what AI does to working hours, but it raises a possibility: being able to accomplish more might give us more reason to keep going.
A shorter week assumes we’ll use some of the time saved to stop. That makes sense when there’s a set amount of work to finish. But much of what we want to do has no obvious endpoint.
Imagine a project you’ve put off because it would take months or require a team you couldn’t afford. With AI, you might be able to attempt it yourself. You finish your existing work sooner, and suddenly there’s something else you want to try. The tools save you time on each task while making your list of possible projects much longer.
You might work more without anyone asking you to. Another hour could mean testing an idea that would otherwise stay in your head. Taking the evening off is still an option, but you’re more aware of what you could accomplish if you kept going. This doesn’t depend on that hour earning you more money. The work itself might be enough to pull you back.
Competition adds another reason. If another team uses the same tools to keep building all week, you may feel less able to take Friday off. Their pace can become the pace customers and employers expect. What began as extra output could become the normal workload.
There’s also a difference between pursuing your own idea and being expected to do more for someone else. A founder might choose longer days because more now seems possible. An employee might inherit that ambition as a tighter deadline, without sharing much of the reward or having much say over their hours.
This is easiest to imagine in digital work. AI might help a plumber prepare quotes faster without reducing the time needed to repair a pipe. How much more someone can accomplish still depends on the work.
A four-day week remains possible. But finishing tasks faster won’t necessarily get us there. We may find ourselves working more because there’s more we can do—and because both we and the people around us keep finding reasons to do it.