We must stop measuring work by the hour
by Micha Kaufman · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Last year, I wrote a memo telling my team that artificial intelligence was coming for their jobs — and mine. I told them bluntly that anyone who did not master these tools could be forced to change careers within months.
It made headlines as a warning, and it was one. Still, I wrote only half the argument, and the half I left out matters more.
It is time to discuss who benefits from AI productivity.
To figure out what the workers who “level up” are owed, let us look at the last time this question was answered: 100 years ago today.
In September 1926, Henry Ford made the five-day, 40-hour workweek permanent in his plants, citing the massive productivity gains the moving assembly line had delivered over the preceding decade.
Ford acted decades after workers had started demanding shorter hours, and he did it for his own reasons. He knew that better-paid, better-rested workers stayed longer, cost less to replace and were more likely to buy cars.
Federal law did not catch up until 1938.
So the lesson is not that an industrialist was generous. It is that sharing productivity dividends is better business. Ford got a steadier workforce, and workers got their weekends. The weekend spurred entire industries, including movie theaters, the travel industry and weekend tourism.
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We are at a similar moment now. AI is doing to knowledge work what the assembly line did to manufacturing: breaking the link between hours spent and value produced.
In 1926, the line ran at a fixed speed, so an hour of labor was a decent proxy for an hour of output. Today, that proxy is dead. When one person using AI does in an afternoon what a team once did in a week, time ceases to measure value.
We need to ask: How do we measure the value of work?
Time became our measurement because it is a finite resource for humans. That is also why we are accountable: Our reputations last as long as we do.
AI does not have those limits.
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So measuring people by the clock no longer makes sense. Instead, we should measure what people actually produce and reward them for their increased productivity through more free time, higher pay or other means.
Cutting the workweek to five days was radical 100 years ago, but it is not radical enough now. Debating four days versus five is arguing about a unit that no longer works. The fix is to stop paying for time and start paying for outcomes, caliber of work and the degree to which AI mastery and human qualities such as creativity and judgment shaped it.
I have already watched this work at scale. Freelancers do not sell hours. Nobody asks a freelancer whether the work was done on a Tuesday afternoon. People ask whether the work was good and on time.
Millions of people choose freelancing precisely because it hands them the clock.
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No one knows what the new unit of measurement will look like, but the imperative is clear: Measuring work by time has stopped serving workers, employers or the economy.
Here is the uncomfortable part: Productivity gains are not inherently shared. Every time a new technology has been introduced since Ford, people have become more productive. The hours stayed, the expectations rose, and the workers did not benefit.
Left alone, AI will not be any different. Companies will fill every hour it frees with more tasks and then measure us on the hours.
Some employers are starting to move. Ernst & Young is spending $100 million this year on bonuses for judgment, adaptability and effective use of AI, essentially paying for what people produce. For most companies, however, the default will still be: same hours, more output, keep the difference.
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I told my team last year that they had to stay competitive, and I meant it — but the other half of the deal belongs to companies. If we expect people to use these tools to become dramatically more productive, then we owe them a share of what that productivity buys. It is just better business.
This brings us back to Ford. He realized that sharing productivity benefits with workers was not a zero-sum game. Worker pay, personal time and company profits all increased.
AI gives us that same opportunity again. The productivity gains are coming, and the question is who wins. If we get this right, the answer can be everyone, and we may finally start measuring work by what it is truly worth.
• Micha Kaufman is the founder and CEO of Fiverr.
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