Who should benefit from the AI productivity dividend?

If AI enables a finance team to produce the same output in four days instead of five, something valuable has been created. A productivity dividend. The obvious answer is that shareholders should benefit. Of course they should. But does all of it need to flow there? Could some become: better customer service? more innovation? shorter working weeks? training? higher salaries? additional commercial activity? more resilient finance teams? AI creates an opportunity to rethink work, rather than simply compress it. The most interesting organisations may be those that ask: “What could we do with this capacity that wasn't possible before?” rather than only: “How many people can we remove?”