![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/bill_gates_shorther_workweek.png?w=2048\")
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Billionaire Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Nvidia\u2019s boss Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk have all made the same prediction in recent years: The workweek is about to shrink. Automation will take over routine tasks, they argue, freeing workers\u2019 time and pushing a four-day work week toward becoming standard. Gates has even floated the idea of a two-day workweek.<\/p>\n
But Mark Dixon, CEO and founder of International Workplace Group (IWG) CEO isn\u2019t buying it. From his vantage point, running the world\u2019s largest flexible office provider\u2014with more than 8 million users across 122 countries and 85% of the Fortune 500 among its customers\u2014the math doesn\u2019t add up.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is focused on productivity, so no time soon,\u201d Dixon says flatly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about the cost of labor,\u201d Dixon explains to Fortune<\/em>. The U.S. and U.K. are experiencing significant cost-of-living crises. At the same time, he says, businesses are experiencing a \u201ccost of operating crisis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s having to control their labor costs because all costs have gone up so much, and you can\u2019t get any more money from customers, so therefore you have to get more out of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Essentially, companies can\u2019t afford to pay the same wages for fewer hours, and they can\u2019t pass the difference on to customers. So any time \u2018freed\u2019 by automation is far more likely to be filled with new tasks than handed back to workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Silicon Valley\u2019s loudest voices frame AI as a route to more leisure. The world\u2019s richest person and the boss of Space X, Tesla and X, Elon Musk has gone as far as predicting work will be completely \u201coptional\u201d and more like a hobby, in as little as 10 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n In reality, Dixon suggests that this scenario would only happen if there\u2019s not enough work to go around, rather than bosses suddenly becoming benevolent. But in his eyes, AI will most likely create more\u2014not less\u2014work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Every major technological shift, he argues, has followed a similar arc: fear of displacement, followed by an expansion of opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cAI will speed up companies\u2019 development, so there\u2019ll be more work, it\u2019ll just be different work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In 19th-century Britain, Dixon recalls English textile workers protesting against new automated machinery, fearing it threatened their livelihoods, lowered wages, and de-skilled their craft during the Industrial Revolution. They were called Luddites.<\/p>\n \u201cThey went around the country smashing up the looms to stop progress. But look, in the end, you\u2019ve heard of the Industrial Revolution. That\u2019s what came from those looms and factory production.\u201d As mass production made goods more available, retail grew; more managers were needed to oversee the machines; the middle class grew, and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n Likewise, there was a similar palpable fear when computers first burst on the scene in the 1980s. The 1996 book Women and Computers detailed people fearing becoming \u201ca slave\u201d to machines and feeling aggressive towards computers.\u201d<\/p>\n But since the explosion of the PC (and then the internet, the Cloud, social media, and so on), most professions have undergone a digital rebrand\u2014instead of disappearing altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n Copywriters now use laptops instead of typewriters; designers rely on Adobe Photoshop instead of pen and paper; and a plethora of IT roles were created along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to stop progress,\u201d Dixon concludes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCompanies have to do what companies have to do, and it\u2019s really important for young people coming into the marketplace to work a little bit harder on really selecting the right jobs, the right avenue, getting extra skills in things like AI. Whatever job you\u2019re going to do, you\u2019ve got to be good at tech.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #IWG #CEO #warns #4day #week #isnt #coming #time #Bill #Gates #Elon #Musk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Billionaire Microsoft cofounde… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[9453,883,1882,4707,529,624,3917,740,885,554,1127,2704,2195,721,9669,886,1980,954,14,2591,2711,613,13,1982],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Elon Musk says work will be optional in the future\u2014but this CEO says AI may create more work, not less<\/h2>\n