Tech Giants Promise Less Work, But Staff Clock 90-Hour AI Sprints!

For years, leaders at major technology companies have promised that artificial intelligence, or AI, will help people work less. They have invested huge amounts of money into developing AI tools, claiming that these tools will make jobs easier and even allow for shorter work weeks. For example, a director at Google once said that AI would make a four-day work week possible. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, even encouraged other companies to try out a four-day work week, saying that AI would soon be able to handle so much work that people would not need to work as much.

However, the reality for many tech workers is very different. A former employee at OpenAI told the BBC that while the company talked about shorter work weeks, they never actually tried it themselves. Instead, the work culture was very demanding, with frequent crisis meetings, weekend work, and tough performance reviews. Workers sometimes had to come in on weekends just to keep up or make sure nothing was broken.

Other tech companies, like Anthropic and Meta, have also talked about how AI will reduce the number of hours people need to work. Anthropic says its AI chatbot Claude can work on its own for a full workday. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has said that AI is changing the way people work and that fewer employees can now do more than ever before. But at the same time, workers at these companies say they are working much longer hours.

In the tech industry, long hours are becoming more common, especially for those working on AI projects. Workers describe periods called 'sprints,' where they work extra hard for several weeks to finish a new feature or product. At companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, these sprints can last for weeks and sometimes mean working up to 90 hours in a single week. Some workers at Meta said they were suddenly moved to new teams to work on AI projects, often without being asked. They called this being 'drafted,' and said they had to work late into the night and on weekends.

There are few rules in the US about how many hours people over 16 can work, but in Europe and the UK, laws limit the work week to 48 hours. Despite this, tech workers in the US often work much more than that. Some workers say that even those not directly involved in AI development are working longer hours because of the technology. For example, a former Google employee said he had to work all night because the company was moving important resources to AI projects, making his job harder. After leaving Google, he said his health and sleep improved, and he believes that too much reliance on AI creates a stressful work environment.

Recent research from UC Berkeley found that using AI tools can actually make people work more. The study followed hundreds of tech workers for eight months and found that they worked faster, took on more tasks, and worked longer hours. One expert from MIT said that even if AI saves time, workers often use that extra time to do more work, either because they want to or because they feel they need to prove their value to their employer.

In the end, while tech leaders say AI will help people work less, many workers are finding the opposite to be true. Instead of having more free time, they are working longer hours and feeling more pressure. Some hope that in the future, AI will really help people have a better work-life balance, but for now, it seems to be making work more demanding.