Almost every word that uses the acronym “AI” has an associated benefit goal, such as saving time, reducing costs, speeding up functionality, increasing revenue, or increasing customer satisfaction.
When AI automates functions, humans need to save time. And with each new iteration, you save more time.
According to Metrigy, AI currently improves employee efficiency by an average of 29.4%. AI for business success 2025-26 Global survey targeting 1,104 companies. In terms of time, incorporating AI technology into work can save approximately 11.8 hours per week per employee.
Over time, it takes a lot of time. So what happens to the time saved?
Within the contact center, AI Agent Assist allows agents to use the five minutes they save during a service call to spend on upsell pitches and increase revenue for their company, just like 43.4% of Metrigy participants did. Optimizing the customer experience A global survey of 656 companies. Alternatively, agents can ask more questions to gather more information about each customer for future personalization, as was the case for 63.8% of businesses in the same study.
Or, as in 17.4% of companies surveyed, it could lead to layoffs.
AI can create or eliminate jobs. For example, in the aforementioned CX survey, 59.9% of IT, CX, and business leaders said that AI is creating more jobs in their organizations than it is eliminating. Fields such as UX Design, AI Ethicist, AI Governance Manager, Prompting Engineer, AI Operations Engineer, and AI Evaluator are on the rise.
At the same time, other roles such as programmers, administrative assistants, receptionists, and customer service agents are decreasing in some companies (and increasing in others). Beyond the knowledge worker sector, we regularly see signs of AI encroaching on human work. For example, my local Wendy's drive-thru line has had conversational AI agents taking orders (including upsells) for several months now. Our brokerage firm is using AI to select investment strategies, a job that used to fall to junior financial planners. And almost all healthcare intake will be done by AI via text or voice.
Will AI signals put an end to the traditional work week?
But what about from a macro perspective? Business leaders need to choose between two general ways in which AI can impact speed and time savings:
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With the same number of people working the same 40-60 hours a week, you produce significantly more, sell more, and produce more.
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Reduce the number of people working 40-60 hours per week and increase performance at the same or higher level
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Same number of people, 25-30 hours per week, same or better pay, performing at the same or better level.
With these three options, it shouldn't be too difficult to choose the one that appeals to you the most. Will the promise of AI ultimately be a turning point in modern human work life? Well, that's up to humans themselves.
If AI increasingly replaces humans' routine (and increasingly complex) work functions, what will be left for humans? AI will never fully replace human intuition, legitimate empathy, and complex reasoning (although it can come close). We will always need humans, but not for every job or every process.
Business leaders have a choice.
The question is how entrepreneurs and business leaders will respond to this new reality. If society continues to maintain the standard that full-time work = 40 hours per week, it will force people to work harder just to reach that 40-hour finish line.
Or you could say: “AI has effectively reduced the need for a five-day work week in many roles.”Still, revenues continue to increase. A reduction to a four-day work week for the same pay would be both plausible and desirable. Two years ago, I made the same argument.pointed out that a shorter work week improves employee performance, improves employee retention (reducing overhead costs in the long run), and improves customer satisfaction. None of these results have changed as AI becomes more integrated into the workplace.
But will executives, entrepreneurs, and Wall Street embrace the big change to a four-day work week? Or will it simply pursue greater shareholder returns while reducing the cost of the personnel needed to further increase profitability?
Again, we all know which one we prefer altruistically. However, the early stages of AI indicate that the movement is toward the latter. There is no momentum to lower the definition of a full-time workweek, and there is ample justification that AI will reduce costs and increase profits.
All it takes is one or two prominent business leaders to start the momentum for AI to improve the quality of human life It's not bad, it's gotten better Take advantage of this major technology advancement. Once one or two leaders announce that AI is the catalyst for the new four-day work week, others will likely follow. Who will be the leaders to begin the biggest workforce transformation of this generation?
