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Calgary Herald

Will AI make the 4-day workweek a reality in Canada? For some it already has

Article content Even U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has chimed in, arguing that AI's productivity gains should translate into shorter working hours. 'You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm going to reduce your work week to 32 hours. (This is) not a radical idea. There are companies around the world that are doing it, with some success,' he said on a June episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Article content At least a few Canadian firms are putting the theory Sanders espoused into practice. Article content 'From a low baseline, we are seeing a slow and gradual increase, mostly by small-to-mid-sized enterprises in the private sector,' O'Connor said. Article content Any chance of accelerating that transition would require more refined and specialized AI tools, which are still only able to support certain forms of work. Article content Article content 'The use of AI has not accelerated sales nearly as much as software engineering, which is now moving multiples faster,' Kirkness said, adding that Convictional's engineering team has used agentic AI coding tools to accelerate their technical output. 'What used to take six months to build now takes three weeks, which is a profound change.' Article content Since Convictional's four-day week was implemented six weeks ago, Kirkness said his team isn't doing more work, but is 'writing the same amount of code in four days instead of five.' Article content A 2024 report from Work Time Revolution found that if companies introduce the use of large language models such as ChatGPT, 91 per cent of workers in the Canadian labour market could see their working hours shortened by 10 per cent or more by 2034. Article content Toronto-headquartered PRAXIS Public Relations Inc., a marketing and communications agency, adopted a four-day week in 2022. Article content Article content But since the launch of ChatGPT late that year, the company has embraced AI to improve its productivity even further, eliminating 'busy work' and allowing staff to focus on strategic and creative work and preserve the reduced workweek, said Matt Juniper, a partner at the firm. Article content PRAXIS PR encourages employees to use AI tools such as Perplexity AI, Inc.'s chatbot, which is viewed as more rigorous for research and academic tasks. Its staff use AI for a wide range of tasks: to write first drafts of press releases; to monitor social media to gauge public sentiment on a topic; to compile media outreach lists; and to help them rehearse client presentations. Article content 'In under 20 minutes, I can get a solid first draft of a press release from AI. For staff who are still learning and doing all the work manually, it wouldn't be realistic to expect an initial draft without giving them a couple days to work on it,' Juniper said. Article content The company leaders insist that their aim is not to slash staff numbers and to pay employees less, but they do think that the rise of AI will affect their hiring in more subtle ways. Article content 'My ambition is not to hire less people in the long run,' Kirkness said. 'But AI will probably change the nature of the roles that we're hiring for.' Article content He acknowledged that some functions, such as finance, are zero-sum for his company. Article content 'If our finance function gets more efficient (due to AI), it doesn't mean we're processing more transactions. That may lead to job losses in the future.' Article content His company's engineers, meanwhile, will see their job functions will change as they increasingly rely on AI to write code. Article content 'They will become more like managers, and oversee the work that the AI agent is doing on their behalf,' he said. Kirkness envisions all of his company staff taking on more 'judgment work' as AI usage grows. Article content Article content Juniper similarly noted that some companies could expedite layoffs in the hopes that AI will fill in the gaps, but he argued that people remain vital in using the tech. Article content 'Human oversight and assessment over what AI is producing … is a critical skill-set that could be a default requirement in many fields in three to five years.' Article content Yet any shift runs the risk of playing out unequally, with some workers likely to be left behind. Some AI and business leaders say that AI will come for white-collar jobs first. But the ideal scenario, O'Connor said, is that AI-fluent workers increase their market value and command the same or a higher salary for fewer hours worked. Meanwhile lower-skilled workers unfamiliar with AI are at a higher risk of displacement, and could end up working fewer hours or resorting to gig work to fill their schedules, he said. Article content Article content He argued that government intervention will likely be required, 'especially in sectors that will experience the greatest disruption … to smooth the transition, preserve jobs, and to prevent major labour and employment shocks.' Article content There will also be competing pressures as technology advances, said Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and economist who studies the four-day week. Some employers will 'want to keep the machines running and push for longer hours at the same time (that) it is clearly possible to achieve more production in less time,' she wrote in her book, Four Days a Week: The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter. Article content Researchers say that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for every company. Various factors, including the structure of a business, its approach to implementing new technologies and work schedules, will play a role in determining if and how adopting AI for the purposes of a shorter workweek is feasible.