Key takeaways
- Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has joined other leaders such as Jamie Dimon in suggesting that AI could lead to a shorter working week for employees, consisting of potentially three or four days
- Yuan explained that AI has the ability to free up a lot of time for humans, which could cause the number of working days a week to decrease
- The four-day working week has been on the minds of senior leaders, and the development of AI could give the initiative the firepower it needs to become more mainstream. However, this will take more AI productivity gains, and more trust from senior leaders
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has joined Bill Gates and Jensen Huang in suggesting AI deployment in companies could lead to a three or four-day workweek, because of the potential time it could free up for employees.
Yuan has also predicted that while some jobs will end up disappearing, new jobs will appear in their place as the technology develops.
While the four-day workweek hasn’t been entirely ruled out by senior leaders, it has been overshadowed by frequent return-to-office mandates. However, automation and AI could be the push the initiative needs to become more widely accepted.
Zoom CEO Predicts Three or Four-Day Workweek Thanks to AI
The CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, has predicted that AI chatbots and agents could enable companies to introduce a three or four-day workweek. Yuan believes that if AI is able to make our lives easier, then there’s a big chance that workers will be able to clock in for fewer days a week.
He told The New York Times in a recent interview that, “Every company will support three days, four days a week. I think this ultimately frees up everyone’s time.”
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While the four-day workweek has been trialled in some European countries, such as Iceland and Belgium, it’s yet to become a mainstream reality for US businesses. However, developments in AI could be what the initiative needs to charge forward.
Experts Agree AI Will Enable Fewer Working Days
Yuan is not the only tech leader who has expressed ideas about a shorter working week as a result of AI. In an interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Bill Gates said that he didn’t think we’d need humans for “most things” in the next ten years, freeing up humans to work less than five days.
Even Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, a company within an industry that likes to put its workers through long working hours, has expressed interest in the idea. He told Bloomberg TV in 2023 that AI will lead to people working “3 and a half days a week”.
However, it may not be all positive news for workers. In fact, Yuan explained that some job opportunities will be gone, especially for entry-level candidates, as AI continues to develop. But he also expressed some hopes that new jobs will pop up in their place. Engineers, for instance, could get jobs managing AI code or AI agents.
Could AI Push The Four-Day Workweek Into Fruition?
Tech.co’s 2025 Impact of Technology on the Workplace report found that the idea of a four-day working week has picked up, with 38% of senior leaders being open-minded about implementing the initiative, compared to 23% last year. With AI now making its way into workflows, this could be the fuel the initiative needs to become more mainstream.
Of course, this will depend on how much AI develops over the next few years. It’s still not entirely certain how productive AI can be. Some studies have found that AI can increase productivity, whereas others have questioned whether it only makes users feel they are being more productive.
Not only will AI have to prove itself, but business leaders will have to learn to put more trust into the technology, particularly if it’s going to take on a significant amount of tasks, or even supplement a full day of work for an employee. While things certainly seem to be moving at a fast pace, it may be a while before we see a level of AI use within companies to the extent where employees can be spared for a day or two.
