A four-day week. It’s true that there’s nothing magical about the conventional five-day week. It’s an invention of modern times. There are plenty of self-employed people who’d say there were working a seven-day week. So, is the claim made by Artificial Intelligence (AI) advocates merely a sales pitch or does it have any substance?
Much depends on how seriously we take this mythical word called “productivity”. I’ve put it like this because there’s a million and one ways of determining what needs to be done as opposed to what people want to do and, when things go wrong, are forced to do.
A beaver is extremely productive. There’s an ingrained motivation to use what nature has provided to build a dam and a home. It’s non-stop. Come setbacks or successes this innovative creature keeps on going. It doesn’t watch the clock. Rarely discouraged.
I’m going to bring up a small paperback that cost 3 shillings and 6 pence when it was published. It’s one of those books that is both comedy and seriousness wrapped up in one. Parkinson’s law or the pursuit of progress is older than I am. It was first published in 1957.
The plot is simple but there are several messages. One for example, relates to the provision of resources. It goes something like this – if only we had a couple more staff and a state or the art information system we could double our efficiency. That’s contrasted by a view of past statistics that often shows a growth in staffing (or computing power) and roughly the same or even less being achieved. Why it’s suggested that AI will circumvent this nicety, I’m not sure. Speed and multiplication don’t always add up to building better projects or being more “productive”.
What a wonderful world it was going to be. The future now. I remember that clunky personal computer on my desk, in about 1996. The sounds of the dial-up modem connecting to the information superhighway of the day. The world wide web was so new we had to keep reminding ourselves of what the www stood for. Boxes of floppy disks replaced filing cabinets.
Here we are 30-years later and what do I find, or not find as the case may be? Tens of thousands of files generated by Apps on my smart phone, tablet and desktop. Whereas once I’d mastered constructing folders with logical names and placing documents exactly where I could find them in their latest version, now I’ve got an unfathomable messy clutter.
Have I become more “productive”? That entirely depends upon what is meant by that word. Decluttering digital information isn’t that much different from decluttering piles of paper on an over weighted office desk. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Where does a four-day week sit in that equation? Parkinson would likely say that whatever the length of the working week we’d fill it with activity. It’s almost transparent to the tools used whether they be paper based or applying the latest powerful computing capabilities.
Remember decades ago, we said; public services were going to be dramatically improved because we could be contacted by e-mail. Scrapping the paper in-tray was a day many people longed for. Files wouldn’t be delayed as they passed from office to office. Desk to desk. Or so it seemed. I don’t think we’ve stopped complaining about public services – have we?
There is one possible new element. If AI use means that humans abdicate from decision-making, then a new situation comes about. This needs to be a choice. Forcing humans out of the loop to chase the God of productivity is a dangerous pathway.
John Vincent 