TIME
A billionaire founder says AI agents keep her awake, not free
Lucy Guo, cofounder of Scale AI and chief executive of the creator monetization platform Passes, told the Fortune Daily Show in September 2026 that artificial intelligence is making people work harder, because someone has to stay awake while the agents run. She described working a 26-hour day after refusing to sleep. Guo became a billionaire before turning 30.
The productivity gain arrives with an invoice written in hours nobody records. A University of California, Berkeley study of a 200-person United States technology company over eight months found employees moved faster, absorbed a wider scope of tasks and stretched work deeper into the day, often unprompted. The output rises; the sleep, the boundary and the question of quality quietly absorb the difference.
Source: Fortune · September 19, 2026