The Saved Hours Doctrine

Public review draft of a working paper introducing the Saved Hours Doctrine: a framework for identifying, measuring and governing human labour time made technically unnecessary after demonstrated productivity gains from artificial intelligence and related systems.

The paper argues that when AI raises productivity, the first distributive question is often not whether jobs disappear, but who captures the saved hours. It defines saved hours, distinguishes them from general productivity gains and voluntary time dividends, and develops an audit protocol for tracing how time savings are converted into reduced working time, higher output expectations, profit, administrative capacity, service expansion or metric capture.

The paper applies the framework across six institutional settings: China, Singapore, the United States, the European Union, Greece and Denmark. It also discusses the relationship between saved hours, working-time politics, algorithmic management, public-sector capacity and the four-day week debate.

This V0.94 release is a DOI-bearing public review draft. It is shared to invite critique before a later Working Paper 1.0 version. It is not peer reviewed and should not be treated as a final empirical finding. The school-pilot material discussed in the project remains a proposed research route, not completed evidence.

Public mirror:
https://hedegreenresearch.com/assets/camelot/reports/ai-labour/the-saved-hours-doctrine/ai-labour__global__2026-05__i001__v0-93__draft.pdf