Workers for top tech companies have fired back at claims AI means less work.
Workers for top tech companies have fired back at claims AI means less work.
Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and more have insisted the use of artificial intelligence will reduce workload and delivering a four-day work week, but staff have painted a very different picture.
An anonymous former OpenAI technical employee, who left in 2025, told the BBC that the firm didn’t actually trial the four-week it was encouraging others to adopt.
They claimed the work culture feature “crisis meetings”, working over the weekend, and “super cut-throat” performance reviews.
They added: “You go in on Saturday or Sunday just to catch up or make sure things aren’t broken.”
Claude developer Anthropic has claimed its tool can work on its own without a break for seven hours.
Sources at both OpenAI and Anthropic told the BBC that sprints on certain projects can hit 90 hours of week across seven-day periods for staff.
Meta, who has used tools like Claude, has since laid off one in 10 of its staff, and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has warned of further job losses as AI tools improve.
Meanwhile, Neil Thompson, an innovation scholar at MIT, warned that workers won’t necessarily have more time.
He explained: “It leads to a situation where even if there were real time savings, it would be sucked up by the changes, and implementing them, and making sure they worked.”
Tech firms claim AI reduces workload but staff face 90-hour weeks
