Aug 11, 2026
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Add us on GoogleAI enthusiasts really want to believe that the tech will, above all else, empower humanity, complementing our productive output and making our most tedious tasks easier rather than completely usurping us in paid positions.
But instead of the widespread riches and shorter work weeks we were promised, so far, human staff have instead faced thousands of layoffs, the automation of some of the parts of our jobs that we enjoyed most and overall existential dread.
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Now, Sam Altman, the head of one of the world’s biggest AI enterprises, has admitted that he doesn’t foresee machine learning ever fostering a toilless utopia where corporate workers only have to clock in for a few hours per week while advanced algorithmic models handle the rest. But his reasoning may leave you feeling a little gaslit.
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Sam Altman’s prediction
“Technology, for a long time, has been promising people that they’re going to work less and they’re going to have all this leisure… But somehow we never get the promise of the four-hour workweek at mass scale in society. And I don’t expect AI to change that,” Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, revealed in a late July episode of the entrepreneurial podcast “Relentless.”
While that statement alone may dash the hopes that Altman and his tech CEO peers have instilled in us for a future where work is optional and scarcity is non-existent, it’s how he continues the thought — which was in response to host Ti Morse’s observation that people seem to be getting somehow busier as technology meant to bolster our productivity advances — that is the real kicker.
Altman emphasized humans’ inherent desire to compete and one-up one another, saying our timeless obsession with how we’re performing and what we have relative to others means “our expectations go up [and] we always want more,” even as inventions like AI allow us to get things done more efficiently and often better.
He predicts that this fixation, which “drives the economy and the desire to want to be useful to other people” will persist despite future advancements, spurring us to keep focusing on work, whatever that looks like — and spending dozens of hours per week doing so.
“We’re all going to be much busier than we thought we were supposed to be in a post-superintelligence world. We’re still going to complain about it, but secretly we’re going to be happy,” he said.
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Humanity’s will to work — insult or compliment?
The chief executive’s comments have inspired such headlines as “Feeling stressed and overworked? Don’t worry — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks that we just love to work, and that’s why AI won’t result in a four-day working week” and “Sam Altman says AI won’t shorten the workweek because humans secretly enjoy being busy. Who doesn’t love the relentless grind of work?”
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But he did preface his thoughts with a deep appreciation for the aspects of human nature that he was speaking about, saying he “really admires” the fact that we continue to “think of new things to do, to create for each other, to want for ourselves.”
He also expressed his firm belief that AI will bring about more productivity gains that will benefit more people, even if we all do end up working nearly the same amount. And, that there will still be room for existential satisfaction after AI takes over in multiple arenas.
“I think there’s going to be lots of great jobs in the future, I really do, I think we’re going to have lots of intellectual fulfillment,” he reassured listeners, though with the caveat that “most jobs are going to adapt more than it feels like they should.”
When Morse proceeded to present the potential issue with “less and less of our direct input [being] correlated with value creation,” Altman contended that “it won’t feel like that.” He used cooking for each other as an example of the “human” things that he thinks will remain valuable to us “long after robots can do a great job cooking food.”
But the question remains whether anyone else will find value, economically or otherwise, in, say, the meals we cook — even if we as the creator extract some internal value from cooking them — when technology can do the exact same or better, and how that will shift the scales of meaning in anything we do.
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Becky Robertson is a senior staff reporter at Moneywise and a lifelong writer. Along with more than a decade covering news at outlets like blogTO and Quill & Quire, she's attended writing residencies around the world. With 33 countries visited, she finds travel to be among her greatest inspirations.
