The World Economic Forum proudly proclaimed in 2023 that robots could automate 40% of domestic chores within a decade, “freeing up time — particularly women’s — for other things”. The future the Jetsons promised may finally be upon us. Goldman Sachs echoes the sentiment for office work: “AI could automate 25% of all work hours”. Follow enough headlines of late and you’d conclude we’re on the precipice of a new golden age - robots fetching cold beer from the fridge while the AI adds the replacement six pack to the grocery list it just made. We have seen this mirage before.

The vacuum cleaner, washing machine, and dishwasher each arrived with marketing claims promising freedom from the tyranny of household chores. The Science Museum frames it aptly: “The introduction of electrically powered household appliances from the late 19th century provided a vision of a leisure-filled future for homeowners—and less drudgery for servants and home helps”. These tools are boring today, even maligned. They were transformative at the time.

Writing with the privilege of hindsight, The Science Museum delivers a blunt and disappointing verdict. “Despite these time and labour-saving devices, households are spending about the same time on chores as 100 years ago”. What happened? Society adapted and developed “higher expected standards of hygiene”. With those savings, we took on more tasks. More laundry - we could keep our clothes cleaner, more often. “The work might be less physical, but we’re doing just as much of it”. The appliances didn’t free time; they redefined our standards of what “clean enough” meant. We went from sweeping weekly to vacuuming daily (the robots, to their credit, have at least taken on this task for us).

This effect is not confined to housework. It’s a tenet of labor-saving tools. As the cost of doing something drops, our appetite for it increases. Email made correspondence nearly free, which is why we all receive 10-100x more emails than old-fashioned letters. Labor saving tools don’t reduce the burden. They raise the floor. When work becomes easy, the question isn’t “what will we do instead”. It’s “what will we now come to expect, or even demand?”

An AI home assistant will imminently make it trivial to track finances, manage nanny schedules, draft emails, and coordinate household logistics. “Trivial” doesn’t mean you don’t have to do it. It means you have no excuse not to do it. The standard for a well-run home will soon resemble a small professional operation.

AI’s time saving promises are fool’s gold. The more interesting question is what will be expected of us once the hard tasks become easy. History shows us standards rise to match the capabilities of the tool - at home and at the office. The floor is about to rise. What will you build on it?