Forget the five-day workweek—Microsoft founder Bill Gates is predicting a three-day workweek thanks to the rise of AI.
Photo: Fortune
Amid concerns that humanity will struggle to compete with computers leading to mass unemployment, Bill Gates offers a vision of a utopian world where “machines can create everything food, utensils, and people do not need to work hard.”
“In the short term, the productivity gains you get from AI are very exciting,” Mr. Gates recently said on “What Now?” “. “This technology is reducing some of the heavy work.”
While many leaders see this as an opportunity to get more out of their employees, he thinks the technology will help workers work less hard.
“A society where you only have to work 3 days a week is a dream,” said the world’s fourth-richest person.
Bill Gates also believes that life should not only revolve around work. With increased free time thanks to AI, people can pay attention to many social issues, for example caring for the elderly. In other words, he assessed that the need to work to create good things would not be lost, but that labor would be exploited in a more effective way.
Overall, at the age of 68, the tech entrepreneur-philanthropist has gained a more philosophical view on the importance of work: “The purpose of life is not just to work.”
Leaders cannot agree on whether AI will replace or assist workers
Previously, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, also said that the next generation of workers only need to go to work about 3.5 days and live to 100 years old thanks to the intervention of AI and technology.
Even billionaire Elon Musk, who supports a culture of hard work, believes AI will help significantly reduce working time. Even in the future, people may not need to go to work.
“We will have something, for the first time, smarter than the smartest person,” he said at the AI Safety Summit event in the UK in early November. “Artificial intelligence will do everything and humans I only work for personal pleasure.”
Goldman Sachs also estimates that AI can replace about 300 million jobs worldwide in the coming years. Meanwhile, Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, assessed that office tasks, which are repetitive, will be the first to be occupied by artificial intelligence.
In early July, Suumit Shah, CEO of e-commerce company Dukkan, announced that he would fire 23 out of 26 employees, equivalent to nearly 90% of the customer service team, to be replaced by a chatbot. He affirmed that this is a difficult but necessary decision at present.
Meanwhile, Indeed recently made layoffs in much of the company’s recruiting department, but there were no layoffs in the AI part of the business. Now the jobs platform’s director, Chris Hyams, wants to create “robot” recruiters that leverage the strengths of both humans and AI.
Although Gates predicts a shorter work week is yet to come, the reality is that some people are already enjoying one.
America’s Got Talent creator Simon Cowell recently revealed that he stopped working on Fridays because it “didn’t make sense” and major employers like Samsung have started giving employees a day off on Fridays every month.
In Iceland, where a four-day workweek was trialled from 2015 to 2019, workers represented by unions—nearly 90% of the workforce—have now won the right to demand a one-week work week. shorter job.
Likewise, in 2021, the Japanese government’s annual economic policy guidance includes a recommendation that companies allow employees the option of a four-day work week.
