Executives at companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on artificial intelligence have insisted for years that the technology will ultimately mean people work fewer hours. A BBC report published on 10 August 2026 found that employees inside those same AI-focused companies report weeks of up to 90 hours, with one former OpenAI employee describing a culture of weekend work, "crisis meetings" and brutal performance reviews.
Four-day week promises vs workplace reality
Four years ago, an engineering director at Google said AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025, according to the BBC. One year after that prediction, OpenAI formally urged companies to begin testing a four-day work week with no change in pay, claiming AI would soon speed up so much human labour that the corporate world should prepare itself.
However, a former OpenAI technical employee who left the company last year told the BBC that OpenAI never actually trialled the four-day week it suggested others should try. The person instead described a gruelling work culture marked by frequent "crisis meetings", weekend work, and "super cut-throat" performance reviews that could see colleagues suddenly let go.
"You go in on Saturday or Sunday just to catch up or make sure things aren't broken," the former employee told the BBC.
Inside the AI work culture
The former OpenAI employee told the BBC they worked at least 70 hours a week, considerably more than in previous tech jobs. They now work at an AI-focused start-up and said their work-life balance has improved to 50-60 hours a week, "outside of sprints". The BBC explained that a "sprint" is a common period in technology companies in which people work long hours in the weeks leading up to a product release.
At OpenAI and Anthropic, the BBC reported, such sprints can stretch for many weeks and top 90 hours of work in a seven-day period, according to tech workers the BBC spoke to. Neither company responded to BBC requests for comment.
The BBC noted that US tech workers are typically well-compensated, and that while investment banking, law and medicine also see long hours, a 14-hour workday was not always the norm in tech – for years it was a more typical 9-5 office job.
Anthropic and Meta: productivity claims and layoffs
Anthropic has boasted that its coding tool and chatbot Claude can work on its own for seven hours without a break, essentially a full corporate workday, the BBC reported. Anthropic's chief executive Dario Amodei has warned that as AI tools become more productive, it could mean even broader job losses.
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has said his company is in the middle of the year when "AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work", and that such tools let far fewer employees do more than they ever could have before. Meta has since laid off 1 in 10 of its employees, according to the BBC.
At Meta, workers told the BBC they have been abruptly pushed onto teams doing urgent AI work this year. They called the process being "drafted", according to one current and one former employee, because people were not given a choice.
"They just move you over," the former employee said. "You can't say no – or if you do, you have to quit."
The BBC reported that Meta recently began to walk back that strict take-it-or-leave-it approach.
AI productivity claims vs reported hours
| Claim | Source | Reported reality |
|---|---|---|
| AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025 | Google engineering director | No four-day week has been introduced at the companies covered in the BBC report |
| Companies should test a four-day work week, no pay change | OpenAI | Former OpenAI employee says the firm never trialled it |
| Claude can work seven hours without a break | Anthropic | Workers at Anthropic report sprints topping 90 hours in a seven-day period |
| AI lets far fewer employees do more than ever before | Mark Zuckerberg, Meta | Meta laid off 1 in 10 employees; workers report being "drafted" onto AI teams |
Implications for enterprise decision-makers
The BBC report focuses on the companies building AI, not on supply chain or logistics deployments. For enterprise technology buyers evaluating automation tools, the findings show a gap between the productivity narratives of AI vendors and the working hours reported by the staff who develop and use those tools. The report also documents a shift in tech culture itself: the BBC noted that for years tech was a more typical 9-5 office job, but the AI boom has brought 70-hour weeks and 14-hour workdays back into the sector that sells automation to the rest of the economy.
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