Bill Gates predicts 2 or 3 work days per week. A game-changing future ahead!
I believe that they are neither great nor bad. There is a saying: “It is what it is”.
For now, what is for sure, nobody can guarantee what the future of AI will bring us and the exact percentage of the workforce that will get replaced. The only thing that can be speculated is that AI will replace many jobs and bring new ones into the market.
Unfortunately, it is not known if these new jobs will outnumber or be less than those that are getting replaced, and this uncertainty stresses out many people worldwide.
The impact of AI on the current workforce in medicine and education
On the bright side, Bill Gates says:
“An era that we are just starting, is that “intelligence is rare”. You know, a great doctor, a great teacher. And with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace. You know, great medical advice, great tutoring. And it’s kind of profound because it solves all these specific problems. (…) But it brings with it kind of so much change.”
This means that education and medical care will become as cheap as possible and as available as it can get. And not any kind of education or medical care, but the very best one. There wasn’t a time in this world when this could be possible, and the best education and care were given (and it is still given) only to the most influential and rich people.
It seems that Gates is optimistic about AI evolution, but even if he hopes for the best, he might prepare for the worst also:
“It’s very profound and even a little bit scary – because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound”
Here Bill Gates might refer to the harsh truth that AI can become greater than us at everything. AI can become smarter, faster than us, with more emotional intelligence and with much better decisions than we can have on our own. In the distant future it might try to become your boyfriend/girlfriend that is just perfect, who can cook, clean, take care of your home and so on.
But to be honest, I tend to be skeptical about this. I believe that humans will need human connections for the rest of their existence. Therefore, I still believe that people will choose an “imperfect” human being to live their lives with.
We might work less, but we’ll need to find a purpose for the other days as well
Nevertheless, Bill Gates remains optimistic and states that AI will come to our advantage, but future generations need to be aware of the fact that, even if they’ll work less, they’ll have to figure out their own ways in which they can find purpose in a world free of “shortages”:
“We weren’t born to do jobs. Jobs are an artifact of the shortage (…) As you get away from that being a necessary thing, you get a lot more leisure time and it’ll be people who’ve grown up in that world of no shortage who will have to think through”
Besides the fact that humans will always need to connect with another human being, I believe that people will always need a purpose to work for in their lives, otherwise, they might feel a huge lack of utility, which is detrimental to their mental health.
In the end, when it comes to the idea of 2 or 3 working days per week, I see that becoming a reality in the future. I don’t know if in the following ten years, but with the current speed at which technology evolves and the amount of resources that are invested in it, we might expect it even faster. The real challenge is for everyone to find a purpose in the other 4 or 5 “weekend” days, otherwise, we might get in trouble for not feeling fulfilled with our existence.
It’s not going to be easy, but I know that we’ll figure it out somehow. We always did. We shouldn’t resist change, but in order to survive and even thrive, we must embrace it and adapt quickly. AI should work for us, and not against us.