Meta CTO has stated that increased productivity due to AI should result in more work, not more time-off
Up until recently, the introduction of artificial intelligence at the workplace meant one of two things: employee layoffs or less work for the humans. But as far as Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth is concerned, there is a third possibility… increase in work.
Speaking at a Q&A event recently, Bosworth said: “I hope that what we do with our extra time is do even more and cooler stuff for the users who use our products every day. We got billions of people using our products every day. I get an extra hour. You know what I do with it? I put it into that.”
This spells bad news as far as employees across the world are concerned. Because as far as the bosses are concerned, automating work means work hours saved which can translate to more tasks for the employees.
Meta’s AI Productivity Argument
Bosworth’s statement was in response to a question by an employee about whether the increased efficiency thanks to the introduction of AI at the workplace would bring back ‘Meta Days’. Meta Days is a discontinued programme at the company that gave employees additional time off.
Bosworth’s reasoning is simple. If AI results in more efficiency, the logical outcome should be that the time spent should be utilised to finish more tasks. He went further to discourage questions about time off: “Go to your parents and ask them: Hey, like every time I get a chance to talk to my boss, ask me if I can have more days off. Ask your parents what they think of that as a career strategy.”
This brings us back to the question: if the use of technology helps an employee save an hour of work, who should benefit from that – the employee or the employer.
The Productivity Paradox
Research has shown that AI does indeed help employees save time. A 2025 analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that workers who use generative AI reportedly saved an average of 5.4% of their working hours. In other words, someone working a 40-hour week would save around 2.2 hours saved per week on average.
But saved time does not necessarily translate into time spent elsewhere. If a developer can finish five tasks a day, that would now mean seven tasks a day. If a marketing campaign takes less time to execute, it will now mean more campaigns to be executed.
A report published by MIT Sloan earlier this year showed that shift. It revealed that software developers now spent more time coding than managing projects.
Long story short, AI is not eliminating work, it is just changing our job description or reallocating the time spent at work.
When Productivity becomes Pressure
Harvard Business Review recently conducted an eight-month long study of employees at a technology firm. It learnt that while AI adoption increased productivity, it also led to cognitive fatigue, longer working hours and the expansion of responsibilities beyond employees’ original job description.
This is a potential productivity trap as the time saved translates into more tasks which can seem never ending. As drafting, research, coding, analysis and communication become faster, the number of things that can reasonably be attempted in a day increases.
This means that employees can feel that they are always working as automating work dramatically decreases the gaps in between while also increasing the list of things to accomplish.
The Last Word
Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index mentions the emergence of ‘human-agent teams’. As AI moves from simple assistants to autonomous agents, they are increasingly take on tasks alongside employees. Anthropic’s latest Economic Index also shows AI systems being entrusted with increasingly complex and autonomous tasks. So, AI is clearly moving towards delegated work.
All of which is great for the employer and for task completion but what about the employee’s wellbeing? Historically, productivity improvements have meant positive things for the employee: higher wages, greater profits, shorter working hours or increased production.
But now, with Meta’s stance on the topic made increasingly clear, it only means one thing. More work for everyone. Workplace policies and labour laws should take this into account before it’s too late or they risk employee burnout.
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