The 40-hour workweek has exactly one anniversary that is difficult to celebrate: in 2026, exactly one hundred years have passed since Henry Ford formally introduced it to Western business. Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of free time. It was a victory for workers in 1926. One hundred years later, Mark Cuban claims that AI has finally opened the door to the next breakthrough.
“Smart, bigger companies will allow employees to create and use agents within security boundaries and improve productivity,” Cuban wrote on March 24 on Network X. “But most importantly, they’ll shave an hour off the workday to begin with. Same pay.” He added that working from home is already “diluting” the start and end of the workday, but that progressive companies will establish an official policy that will reduce the work week by at least five hours, citing it as a move that “sets the tone in the company” and rewards people who do their daily work with more time.
The forecast is bolder than it seems at first glance. Cuban isn’t your typical theoretical optimist: He sold Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion, funded hundreds of companies on Shark Tank and, by his own account, had more than 60 AI apps on his phone before the general public started paying attention to the tools. In the context of stagnant wages, peanut butter raises that are distributed evenly regardless of contribution, and the ever-increasing cost of living, going back an hour each day without losing pay would be nothing short of a privilege. For many workers, it would be the first real rise in living standards in years.
Wider pressure on the old work model is coming from many sides at once. Research shows that productivity declines between 4 and 6 p.m. as employees return to their work-from-home habits — going to the gym, picking up the kids from school. Many have quietly “cancelled” work on Fridays, and emails remain unanswered because even those at the desk cannot make an appointment. Now, with governments reconsidering the four-day work week, the pressure on working hours that began with the pandemic is not abating, but is transforming into a new phase.
Cuban’s thesis, however, has one implicit assumption that deserves attention: that companies will transfer the productivity gained thanks to AI agents to employees in the form of free time, and not reduce it solely to reducing costs or the number of employees. The history of technological advances in the workplace does not always give cause for optimism in this regard. Electricity, computers, and the Internet all increased productivity, but the 40-hour workweek remained intact. The question is not only whether AI can shorten the working day, but whether companies will allow it, writes Fortune.