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Guest Keynote: Will AI Get Us to a Four-Day Workweek? -Rethinking Work and Human Value in the Age of AI
Wednesday, August 26, 2026 / 05:45 PM - 06:30 PM JST
About the Session
In spring 2026, graduation ceremonies across the U.S. saw an unusual phenomenon: students booing every time a commencement speaker mentioned AI. It was the quiet fury of a generation watching AI swallow the entry-level jobs they'd spent years preparing for. The art and creative worlds are caught in the same tension — pushing back against generative AI while simultaneously experimenting with it.None of this is a distant problem for Japanese workplaces. The real question is: who benefits from AI's productivity gains? Will they translate into fewer working hours for all of us — or will the wealth flow to a select few, leaving many without work and without meaning? Keynes famously predicted his grandchildren would work just fifteen hours a week. He was wrong. Technology doesn't deliver a better future on its own. Which is exactly why the future shouldn't be something we passively accept as someone else's answer — it's something we question, choose, and design for ourselves. Where does human value truly lie? Join me for 45 minutes of exploring the future of work, starting from that question.