Billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates has shared his prediction for the future of human work. He believes that the development of technology, in particular artificial intelligence, could lead to a significant reduction in the workweek. Gates considers AI to be an extraordinary technology, which, however, is in a «bubble» like the dot-coms.
Billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates has shared his prediction for the future of human work. He believes that the development of technology, in particular artificial intelligence, could lead to a significant reduction in the workweek. Gates considers AI to be an extraordinary technology, which, however, is in a «bubble» like the dot-coms.
Bill Gates predicts that technological advances, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, will likely lead to a reduction in the working week to two days within the next decade, as AI replaces humans in «most jobs,» the Daily Express reports.
He explained that while current artificial intelligence lacks specialized knowledge and human experts such as doctors and educators are still necessary, the coming decade could bring dramatic changes.
«It’s a pretty profound question because it addresses all these specific issues, like the shortage of doctors or mental health professionals, but it brings with it so many changes. What will jobs be like? Do we have to work only 2 or 3 days a week? I like how it will foster innovation, but I think it’s still unknown whether we can shape it. It’s very profound and even a little scary because it’s happening very quickly and there’s no upper limit,» the billionaire said.
The Microsoft co-founder believes that this new technological era of «free intellectual activity» will force society to confront difficult questions about what roles people should continue to fulfill. Gates predicts that very few professions will stand up to such scrutiny.
But Bill Gates also believes that the current bubble is similar to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when several Internet companies turned out to be overvalued, leading to a significant crash.
«As a result, something very fundamental happened. The world became completely different. Some companies were successful, but many companies were similar to each other, lagging behind and burning capital. There are certainly many such investments that will turn out to be dead ends,» Gates said.
Gates also said that artificial intelligence is the «greatest technical achievement» of his lifetime.
«Its value is extremely high, just like the creation of the Internet, which ended up being very valuable. But you have hype. And some of these companies will be glad they spent all that money. Some of them, you know, will use data centers where electricity is too expensive,» the billionaire noted.
He’s not alone in believing AI could be in a dot-com-like bubble. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously said that artificial intelligence is one of the most important developments in a «very long time,» leading to excessive hype around the AI market .
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also believes that the artificial intelligence boom is overstated, but will continue for several more years.
