OpenAI encourages firms to trial four-day weeks to adapt to AI era

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI says employers should consider trialling a four-day work week as AI use and demand grows in the workplace.

Its "people-first" policy proposals set out a range of ideas to help society adjust to an AI era - something it says will bring benefits but also disruption to our lives and careers.

Among its suggestions were creating more work opportunities in people-facing sectors such as childcare, education and healthcare.

The company said its set of initial ideas - chiefly aimed at the US - aimed to prompt discussions about action needed as AI systems become more capable.

Rapid reductions in the time taken by AI tools to complete some tasks mean a transition to advanced AI is in sight, OpenAI said in its Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age report.

"If progress continues, we can expect systems to be capable of carrying out projects that currently take people months," it added.

"This shift will reshape how organisations run, how knowledge is created, and how people find meaning and opportunity."

The company said to plan for this, firms should be incentivised to find "durable improvements in workers' benefits" - such as by piloting four-day work weeks with no loss in pay.

Businesses could also increase retirement contributions, cover more healthcare costs and subsidise childcare, OpenAI said.

It comes after warnings that the rise of increasingly capable AI tools could displace people from jobs.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said in December such displacement could mirror that seen during the Industrial Revolution.

However, others have said the impact of AI may be felt much later than tech firms predict.

This is not the first time a large AI company has set out its vision for social or economic changes needed to manage increased use and demands of the tech.

Some of OpenAI's suggestions, such as creating a "public wealth fund" to give citizens a stake in AI-driven economic growth, mirror a set of policy ideas published by rival firm Anthropic in October.

This said workers and students should be equipped with skills needed for emerging jobs, and planning processes should be revised to allow for more energy and computing infrastructure.

More broadly, firms have ploughed ahead with AI development - including of "superintelligence" they believe could outsmart humans - while warning of its detrimental impact to some areas of society.

But some also believe the tech's impact has been overstated, saying it may be years before any transformational effect on jobs, productivity and the economy is seen.

Adam Slater, lead economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a recent research note that many scenarios regarding AI's transformative growth "rely on optimistic modelling assumptions about micro-productivity gains and the pace of AI adoption, or on AI sharply raising the rate of generation of new ideas".

He added while past periods of technological change and advance showed potential for large productivity gains, these "can take decades to materialise and can also tail off surprisingly quickly".