3-day by now. 4-day was due before AI, so why would this great boost not make the difference?
Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week
Submitted 16 hours ago by neme@lemm.ee to workreform@lemmy.world
Comments
EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 11 minutes ago
3-day week, baseline annual salary across the board of $100,000, free health care for all and capital asset tax of 95% over $50 million
Who’s with me?
EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 6 minutes ago
The people.
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
but then shareholders?
hark@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
We should’ve gotten a 4-day work week decades ago. Now it should be a 3-day work week at most and I’m being generous. The capitalists are always screeching about the low birth rate, but if people were working 3 days a week and making a decent living off that time, it would help the birth rate because then a household with two working parents could be scheduled on different days and alternate staying home with the child, plus have a shared day off every week.
Anyway, that’s just a selling point to make to the capitalists. Whether or not it helps with the birth rate doesn’t matter as much as the fact that we’re owed shorter work weeks thanks to all the blood, sweat, and tears that labor has put into making the world as wealthy as it is now. What’s the point of all this work if not to improve our standard of living? Technology making our lives better is hitting diminishing returns and now it’s often not making our lives better or it’s even making our lives worse.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
The argument for a 4 day work week is that studies have shown it maintains the same level of productivity as a 5 day workweek, but it makes people happier, so it doesn’t slow down the economy, but actually improves it. What’s the argument for a 3 day work week?
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Because people deserve more time to be people. Not everything has to serve the Holy Economy.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
A 3 day work week maintains the same level of productivity and makes people happier.
What’s the argument for a 2 day work week?
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
studiespilot projects, and successful ones.WarlordSdocy@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I think the argument would be that the productivity gains that have happened since the 5 day work week was implemented means that if we want that same level of productivity then a 3 day work week would get that. It would be less productive then currently but the argument would be that a lot of that productivity is just going towards the profits of the companies through having to hire less people. Instead of you wanted to maintain current productivity with a 3 day work week you’d have to hire more people which is good with the amount of wealth transfer and inequality that’s been happening.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 7 hours ago
My reading of their argument is that when the 5 day a week, 40 hour work week began there was a specific level of productivity. As technology increased the output increased. If we believe that recent increases make it so that we only need to work 4 days to maintain our current output, we should be owed 3 days because by the same logic long ago we should’ve dropped to 4.
Widdershins@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Imagine being rich as fuck because you’re working 6 days a week instead of still barely making ends meet.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 15 hours ago
“Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations,” Sanders said. “You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I’m gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours.”
0% chance this wouldn’t also come with a 20% pay cut.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
40% pay cut, those server farms are expensive
thefartographer@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
100% pay cut, and you better say thank you
Kichae@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
Sure, but that’s not what’s being discussed. Sanders is saying people deserve a 4 day work week at full pay.
Anyone can negotiate a 4 day work week for a 20% paycut. That’s not worth public figures time to discuss.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
I’ve had a difficult time negotiating this as an American mechanical engineer. There’s this bizarre norm of working long weeks even though we get paid way more than most jobs.
I just want health care and they won’t offer it at 35 hours. If I’m missing some obvious trick here, please inform me!
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 15 hours ago
Except even with a 20% pat cut it might still be hard to get because any amount of personal time threatens your dedication to their profits.
Xerxos@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
If productivity increases by x% they are going to fire x% of the workforce and give the saved money to themselves.
Or more realistically, they fire x+5 percent, just to see if you work slaves can’t be worked a bit harder.
HubertManne@piefed.social 15 hours ago
Heck. This should have happened in the 80's.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
It did, for a select few. Less than four days, even. You just had to be one of the finance sector aristocrats who laid claim to enough passive rents.
somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
1880s. Industrial revolution.
AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Most of my jobs expect higher output over the same duration.
So…yeah.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 8 hours ago
Charmingly naive thinking the oligarchs will ever be happy with the level of production they get in return for less and less of their wealth.
DaddleDew@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Nah, the top 0.1% will just pocket 90% of the fruits of that extra productivity and the top 10% the remaining 10%.
The rest will either be fired or asked to do the part of the work those who were fired did for the same pay.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Wait until automated freight delivery services (from trains and trucks down to little carrier bots) kill about a third of the jobs that exist.
In ten years people would be working less than twelve hours a week, but rich and powerful people will not give up a jot or penny of wealth and power.
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Look at the rust belt to see our futures.
0x0@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Is that a Reynolds reference?
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
You can’t resist technology, it will ALWAYS win. Economies always strive to be more efficient, and people will always gravitate towards the convenience of efficiency. Because of this, new technologies get adopted all the time, and economies evolve with them.
Think about computers for a second. How many jobs have they created that didn’t exist 50 years ago? There were no online retailers or social media managers or youtubers or software engineers back then. These are all new jobs that were created recently, and they dominate our economy. Even traditional jobs that didn’t use computers before like an accountant, lawyer, or doctor do now because these are powerful tools.
But it’s not just computers, the same thing happened with the television, the radio, the telegraph, cars, trains, even light bulbs. Before, electric street lamps became a thing, cities used to hire lamplighters who would go around the streets lighting and extinguishing gas lamps. When electric street lamps started being adopted a lot of people complained about how this new technology is going to automate away jobs and hurt the economy… but it didn’t.
Instead, the economy specialized and people created new businesses and took on new jobs. The same thing will happen here. It’s simply going be the next major thing to evolve the economy, and we will adopt it and adapt to it just like the many different technologies before it.
JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Nobody is arguing that technology won’t progress. Even Marx defends that as a precondition for socialism/communism.
The question is the following. Tomorrow a ground breaking technology is developed that makes literally everyone twice as productive. (Please let’s ignore the technical aspect of this. I’m simplifying for the sake of the argument, but this is happening at some paces everywhere).
Now you have 3 options:
- Everyone can just work half the time for the same productivity. I.e. the economy can sustain itself with people just working less (which is a MAJOR quality of life increase).
- Everyone works the same amount of time but their salaries double.
- Everyone works the same amount of time. Their salaries increase a small %, perhaps keeping up with inflation, perhaps a tiny bit more than that, sometimes even not keeping up with inflation. The added productivity results in increased wealth aggregation at the top.
Number 1 is what people are talking about in this thread.
Number 2 won’t happen because salaries aren’t actually tied to productivity. Productivity just sets a higher limit on salary that in any case is never reached. The salaries are actually determined by competition between workers.
Number 3. Has been happening since the seventies and will continue to happen.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 hours ago
There has been a study done in 1970 called The Limits to Growth that predicted that exponential economic growth would come to a halt necessarily, because you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system. It took many decades more than predicted, but I suspect that we’re actually at this point now.
Workplaces mostly exist nowadays to grow the economy. It takes rather little work to maintain the world nowadays. That is why we’re facing a declining demand in human labor.
Since the labor market is a free market, it is regulated by Supply and Demand. That means, if supply is high, prices drop; if demand is high, prices rise. On the labor market, that means that a declining demand for human labor leads to lower prices for that labor, a.k.a. wages.
That is the crisis that the US is currently facing: Declining wages, a.k.a. inflation, a.k.a. Cost of Living crisis.
WarlordSdocy@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
The problem comes when those technological innovations increase productivity which companies use solely to increase their bottom line. These innovations should be benefitting workers directly.
Outside of that a lot of your argument rests on the idea that there will always be new better jobs for humans to move into. However even the examples you gave aren’t great. How is someone doing manufacturing or transportation or extinguishing the street lights going to suddenly become a computer programmer? Especially considering how atleast in the US you’d have to pay to go to college to do that. And even then we’ve started to see in recent years a lot of these new “high demand” jobs getting saturated. As time goes on and companies use productivity gains to purely to benefit their profits they’re gonna lay off more people and new jobs from new technologies aren’t going to be able to keep up.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
You’re correct that this has always been the case in the past.
Advances in technology free people up to do other productive things.
I imagine that trend may stop some time, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 11 hours ago
Does anyone here actually see productivity improvements to their roles from using AI?
I’m a telecoms engineer and I see limited use cases in my role for AI. If I need to process data then I need something that can do math reliably. For document generation I can only reliably get it to build out a structure and even then I’ve more than likely got an existing document the I can use as a structure template.
Network design, system specification and project engineering are all so specific to the use case and have so few examples provided in public data sets that anything AI outputs is usually nonsense.
Am I missing some use cases here?
Also, if you do see productivity improvements from AI, why would you tell your employer? They want a 5 day working week but they know what they expect to be achieved in that week, so that’s what they get.
rumba@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
Yes.
Document that code I wrote 7 years ago, suggest any security or efficiency changes. It’s surprisingly adept at that.
Give me the changes to NixOS 25.05 configuration.nix to add wadroid. Fails with an error, paste the error back into prompt. Oh, you need these kernel modules that are no longer default as of 25.05 make this change. Different error paste it back, Make this one last change and then reboot. It works. I spent a total of 5 minutes on it. If I were just using Google and screwing around that might have been half a morning.
OBS is giving me a pixel resolution warning. AI: it’s one of your cameras or some media you’ve added in an unsupported format. Give me a quick shell script to run through all of my media directories in this tree and convert all the MP4 video that’s yuv720 to a supported format in new tree so I can swap them out in the end with no risk. 30 seconds later it’s there. Yes, I can write that but I’m not going to have it done in 30 seconds. And if one of the files errors I just shove the error right back in the AI. I don’t personally care why one in 50 images failed I just want them to be converted and I’m far enough along and done in Kruger that I honestly don’t really care about what I don’t know as long as I can learn a little more and still get the job done.
Give me a python script to go through a file full of URLs and verify the SSL key expiration dates. Have a variable for how far the future to alert and then slack me a message at 10:00 a.m. everyday which URLs and IPs are expiring earlier than that variable. Also a bunch of the IPs don’t resolve to external addresses so you’re going to have to fake the calls to check them. Here’s my slack token in the channel name.
3 minute project
It doesn’t do my job for me but it gets rid of a hell of a lot of tech debt that I’ll never get around to. I won’t give it monolithic complicated jobs because it’s not good at it. But I will absolutely tell it to make me a flask app with stubs for half a dozen features. Or give it the source for a shitty old admin web page and ask it to modernize the CSS and add session logins.
Sure, if I’m not watching it it might do something relatively stupid. But honestly it has about the same odds of catching something I did years ago that was relatively stupid and telling me to fix it.
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Does anyone here actually see productivity improvements to their roles from using AI?
Unless you’re a scammer or a spammer, the answer is legitimately “No”.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 10 hours ago
My gut feeling, based on the kind of repetitive nonsense I see them produce and bang on about, is that a lot of management types see AI efficiency because the work they do is repetitive and easily aided by AI input so they assume everything can be improved by it.
Not to say I don’t see the benefits of a good manager, I just don’t think they are that common.
turtlesareneat@discuss.online 11 hours ago
Claude can spit out powershell scripts up to like, 400 or 500 lines without errors or with minimal, easily debugged errors. Adds things like error correction, colored text, user interaction, comments the code pretty well. Saves me hours every time I fire it up, so that I can in turn save myself dozens of hours with the scripts themselves.
But as far as I tell my boss, there is no AI use, and that’s how we’re keeping that for now/indefinitely
clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
you see, for programming, AI achieved what SQL tried to do with database queries: programming by just telling the computer what you want.
the catch is that Hunan language is imprecise, so if you don’t know how to review what the AI produced, the AI might have written a script to wipe your data in the computer and you don’t even know until you run it and it is too late
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
So you’re sharing your data with third parties and relinquishing code copyright without telling your boss?
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 11 hours ago
That’s pretty great, what kind of things do you use the PowerShell scripts for?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
I do. Part of my job involves writing code and I often don’t even know where to start. When I get the first draft I’ll know which documentation to read, and then I make it actually work. Even when the LLM fails completely, writing its prompt serves as a rubber duck.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 10 hours ago
So do you frame the problem to the LLM, get it to spot out an example piece of code and then run through that initial attempt to get an idea of how to approach the problem? Kind of like prototyping the problem?
I take it you find that more efficient than traditional code planning methods? Or do you then start building flow charts/pseudo code from that prototype and confirm the logic to build more readable or efficient code?
WarlordSdocy@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
I feel like AI is just going to end up replacing interns or entry level people, it can do easy tasks that would take a while by hand to do. Which based on how bad the job market seems to have been for people like me just trying to enter it somewhat makes sense.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 1 hour ago
Yeah the whole missing entry level job thing for most industries is going to backfire with exploding wages for experienced people. Without training grads and apprentices there’s an ever decreasing pool of experienced people to pick from.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
I find it useful for correcting my syntax (when it’s correct 😂) for certain networking devices. I touch so many vendors it’s not always one I can remember all the commands for.
It’s kinda become a Google replacement for me.
I have found certain areas it’s weak and I know when to quit when I’m ahead and it just agrees with me and spits out more incorrect info when I call it out.
Also when are we going to hit an AI feedback loop? 😅
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 6 hours ago
I find the AI summary can be helpful when searching, but also not much more helpful than a summary of the first few search results which are mostly only loosely related paid for advertising …
tarknassus@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Interesting that the article never cites or states how much AI has improved productivity - but rather focuses on the 4-day work week. Kinda strange to only look at the end outcome and ignore the cause of expecting that outcome.
antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
No, personal computers made us productive enough for a 4 day work week. We’re down to like 24 hours per week now. I think many would enjoy four 6-hour days, while others may prefer three 8-hour days. And a rare few might want to work two 12-hour shifts.
Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Honestly, there’s probably a lot of people actually working these shorter weeks to get their productive work done but just being forced to sit at a desk for the full 40. Office Space’s “15 minutes of real work each day” didn’t come from no where.
plyth@feddit.org 6 hours ago
Let’s use technology to benefit workers," Sanders said.
That’s Socialist thinking in a Capitalist country. He doesn’t own the means of production to change the schedules. In a Capitalist country you need the market power to negotiate for it.
So call for unionizing because the opportunity is there.
He doesn’t, so it is a distraction.
Greyghoster@aussie.zone 14 hours ago
Computerisation, the paperless office etc all were supposed to generate better quality of life for workers. It was how it was sold. The reality is that staff numbers were reduced with work and competitive pressures increasing rates of stress and depression.
tehWrapper@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
They will just lay people off and have less people
Placebonickname@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I’m still waiting for self checkout, airport self service check-in, automated answer services for credit cards, and computerized healthcare systems to make food, airplane tickets, consumer goods, and healthcare less expensive.
And I feel like I’ve been waiting a while…
mintiefresh@piefed.ca 14 hours ago
We used to dream that AI would do all the boring stuff so we could pursue our artistic endeavors.
Turns out it's the opposite lol. There will be no days off for us.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
The other day for laughs in jira I looked at the suggested issues the AI came up with, and they looked like jargon laden nonsense but I could see a future where the upper management do nothing business idiots don’t care and just slop up a bunch of tasks and assign those out.
Everything has become an exercise in cosplaying and pantomiming the thing that’s supposed to actually happen, and AI is the thing that’ll really keep that train rolling. It’s a fucking weapons grade, automated potemkin village creator.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 10 hours ago
Make sure to use AI to solve the issues flagged by AI.
kibiz0r@midwest.social 12 hours ago
Kolanaki@pawb.social 14 hours ago
But think of the productivity if we had AI and a 7 day workweek! /s
OpenStars@piefed.social 13 hours ago
They have AI, we have the "right to work"... for minimum wage 😞
Professorozone@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I think the plan is that a lot of people get a 0 day work week. That’s one of the problems.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
I think most people should get a 0 day work week. We could have fully automated luxury gay space communism.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Human productivity alone warranted a 4-day workweek. With AI benefits added in, we should be going down to 3.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
2 day work week. Standard hours for a work week are just like the minimum wage. They’ve been stagnant for decades and haven’t adjusted according to company profits and worker productivity increases.
2 days. Why would you ask for 4? That puts you in a shitty bargaining position.
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Bernie says a lot.
But can’t say the word GENOCIDEComradePenguin@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
He does, I saw an interview with him yesterday
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
that would be the first time, others have claimed it other times, turned out to be wrong.
So source?
csh83669@programming.dev 15 hours ago
Yeah, I just graced with a glorious 0-day work week. There is no chance ANY of this “productivity” will get anywhere near workers. It’s just a new, exciting way to centralize wealth and power. And if the models get as “intelligent” as the claim they will in 5 years, then with a helping of slavery to boot, ones they are “as smart or smarter” than humans, just without pesky things like rights…
aaron@infosec.pub 7 hours ago
You are the capitalist society. It is all you vote for. Bernie Sanders is just the limited hangout. You surely don’t expect the rest of the world to buy it any more do you?
Crampon@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Why you care about the opinion of a guy who took the money and ran twice?
Meme material really.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
We gave him the money. Willingly. Because we wanted a better future.
londos@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Got ems!
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
I think that in some domains (for example, software development) one person working 40 hours is significantly more productive than two people working 20 hours each. Coordination adds a lot of overhead. There’s also the difficulty of finding a second qualified employee.
But that’s all moot anyway. Someone working 4 days is always going to earn less than someone working 5, and I’m pretty sure most Americans would choose to work more and get more money even if they could afford to work only 4.
Valmond@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Good luck making a bigger project like that (even a small project).
grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 14 hours ago
I have a 7-hour work day and a 5-day work week. I make less than I did at my previous (8.5-hour/5-day) job, but I’m much, much happier. Highly recommend working less if you can swing it.
I do agree that coordination is a PITA. But, 7 hours is doable and it’s not like I’d be actually productive for an extra hour a day. My brain goes to mush.
Some of my coworkers work longer days and take every a day off every other week. As long as they work 70 hours a biweek they’re good.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
I don’t mean to say that no-one would choose to work less, or that doing so is a bad idea. Heck, I’m unemployed and not actively looking for work right now myself.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
But then they couldn’t pay 1/2 as many people as they used to while still expecting the same amount of work to get done.