– By 2030, as a result of technological development, you will not need to work more than 15 hours a week. This was predicted by the world-renowned economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news But new technology has not given us significantly shorter working hours as he and many others predicted. We work roughly the same amount, even though productivity has increased. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news And shorter working hours have not been on the agenda either. For now. In the last three years, a number of countries have started experimenting with shorter working weeks and fewer working hours without reduced wages. Among others Ireland, Australia, Iceland and Spain. The experiments have shown that fewer working hours lead to increased productivity, a better balance between work and leisure, less friction between work and private life, and less stress and anxiety. – I think it is very possible that we are entering a time where reducing working hours is on the political agenda, Gudmundur D. Haraldsson tells news. He sits on the board of the democracy think tank Alda and does research on working time. Gudmundur D. Haraldsson believes shorter working hours are entering the political conversation. Haraldsson points to three reasons why shorter working hours are suddenly now on the agenda. 1. Technological breakthroughs The first is as a result of technological development. – More and more people have recognized that we have been in a time where the number of working hours has not decreased, and that it does not correspond to how technology has developed, he explains. More free time without getting less pay. This is the model being tested in several countries. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news 2. Corona makes change no longer seem impossible The second thing is, according to the researcher, that the corona pandemic changed people’s perception of what kind of large political projects are possible to carry out. The pandemic made us understand that major political changes were possible, and relatively quickly, if you saw the need for it and made up your mind. – We are on our way out of a time where change has felt impossible. There is now a desire for something completely different from the system we have had, he explains. The pandemic changed people’s perception of what kind of large political projects are possible to carry out. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news – I think we are in a new era when it comes to the bigger political picture. It opens up possibilities for changes we have not seen before. 3. Large experiments yield positive results The third, which now opens the door wide, are several large experiments with shorter working hours without reduced pay that have yielded good results. – The experiments in Iceland reduced the working week by four to five hours in a number of workplaces. You sort of worked four and a half days a week, says Haraldsson. This was successful because both employees and management worked together to improve how they did their jobs, how the processes were carried out, how the guards were staffed and found ways to succeed. Would you like Norway to introduce a shorter working week? No, I think it works the way it is now. Yes, I think we should have more free time. Show result In a UK trial scheme in 2022 with 70 companies, 86 percent of companies said the four-day week was so successful that they planned to keep it after the trial period ended. Haraldsson has been researching working hours since 2010, and says that the last three years have been different. – There is more discussion, more interest, more and more people recognize the possibilities, he says passionately. Despite these startling results, the experiments did not work equally well for all companies. Some companies canceled the experiment, others have not yet switched to using the four-day format full-time, writes the BBC. For some companies, especially customer-facing businesses, creating sufficient room in the timetable for a four-day working week means additional employment costs. Others experienced that the intense work that had to be squeezed into the four days led to burnout for some. This applies to a small part of the participants. But that means that the four-day working week is not yet an automatic solution for everyone. Is artificial intelligence the way to shorter working hours? Christopher Pissarides is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He is also a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and believes that artificial intelligence can be the way to a four-day working week. Pissarides thinks KI will give us a four-day working week. Photo: Reuters – I am very optimistic about increased productivity, he said in an interview at a conference in Glasgow this year. – It would be easy to switch to a four-day working week, he said. Haraldsson also believes that this may be possible in the long run. – If the setting is there, artificial intelligence can help enable a reduction in working hours, Haraldsson believes. – But it will take time. He points out that major societal changes have not been made overnight. Eirik Solheim is an AI expert at news Beta. Eirik Solheim is a technology expert and works at NRKBeta. He believes that AI has good opportunities to make work more efficient without it taking our jobs. – Some of the things that AI can do are so time-saving that you can imagine the possibility of a shorter working week or shorter working days as a result of the increased productivity, he explains. He hopes that this technology can do some of the same things that the other industrial revolutions have done. – If we look at the big math, we now work fewer hours a day to get food and a roof over our heads than we did 100 years ago or 200 years ago. And we manage quite well anyway. We can hope that this can lead to something similar. He does not think we will be replaced by AI, but by workers who use AI. – Currently, these systems are not very intelligent, but it is a development that is going extremely fast. ChatGPT failed when the journalist sought advice. Photo: Alexander Slotten / news – It is stretching it a bit to say that AI replaces jobs, but a journalist I spoke to said that he will not be replaced by artificial intelligence, but that he will rather be replaced by a journalist which masters artificial intelligence. It becomes a tool that many workers must learn to use in order to compete. – With this technology, it is the office jobs that can possibly be replaced, Solheim points out. But not everything can be done by robots yet. The technology expert points, for example, to the production of food and the construction of houses as examples of things we have not yet fully automated. These are the things we really need to survive. – The office rat may have to go out again and start doing some proper work. Then you don’t have to just sit inside and worry about some financial stuff that the computer can do even better than you can, says Solheim. AI can potentially take the jobs of office rats. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news Working time researcher Haraldsson believes that those who hope that AI will give us more free time must exercise patience. – I think whatever happens with artificial intelligence, it will take a long time. How we work and how we think takes a long time to change, he says. – This is driven by technology, but basically a desire for a better balance between work and leisure and the recognition that we are not utilizing technology in the best possible way. Haraldsson believes that the most important thing is the attitude towards people. – Will we be able to use artificial intelligence quickly to reduce hours? Can it help us in the long run? Maybe. I’m not too pessimistic, I’m not optimistic either. Let’s see what the future brings us.
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