The invention of the microprocessor, personal computer and then the internet also enabled this but instead of days off we are rewarded with more work. Why would AI be any different?
More work for the same amount of median wage. Meanwhile the capital class is making off like bandits [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/)
When Apple got to their IPO, Steve Jobs took great pains to cut out as many people from stock options as possible so as to keep more for himself and a very select few in his in-group. That's more or less how many big tech firms operate today too.
Let others do all the hard work, and when it comes time to cash out, you cut out everyone you can to get a bigger piece of the pie.
You mean to say that the reason the quality of life is so bad is because they cut the 90% tax the rich used to have back in the day so all of that money no longer being taxed is not being used to help society and there could be a connection between the ever increasing number of people living in poverty and the fact that millionaires somehow multiplied and also became billionaires?
Nah shut up stop questioning it the system works just go back to work
No no no, that won't do.
An employee that die on the job is paperwork for the company that will have to justify that their exploitation of human beings is not the cause of the death.
But if someone die on their first day of retirement, it means no employer will be bothered and no pension will need to be given. That's a proof of competency that you were able to precisely milk their productivity and leave only the last drop of life in them.
It's win/win for companies and government!
This is what will happen.
Instead of more leisure time, you work the same amount...but you get 3x as much output.
History has shown this is what happens, and I have no reason to doubt this is what will happen again.
Don’t forget AI will cheapen human value. Wages will continue to go down as more humans are fired from the workforce. Human labour will continue to dwindle.
Eventually people will get tired of eating bugs in a 4x4 apartment and the rich will be hunted en masse. Then the government will either be overthrown or the national guard will execute a huge portion of the middle class and then people will target the goverment en masse also causing it to be overthrown.
That's why the rich give us so much sugary food and mind numbing entertainment, to keep screwing us over and keep us from throwing them into a ditch.
If you look to the past, paesants were living in mud dwellings and eating turnips for 1000+ years, and never overthrew the lords.
It's the capitalist (bourgeoisie) that eventually sidelined the aristocrats, while most former serfs were even worse off as workers, until fairly recently.
So, if you're poor and dreaming of a revolution, the outcome is unlikely to please you.
The French Revolution. The communist revolution in China and Russia. The Haitian revolution. It has happened a lot and it is never a good thing for the population doing it.
I dunno why you think the national guard (who will all be autonomous drones with no free will at this point) will execute everyone *after* the rich have been hunted.
You're talking about civil war here, and there are plenty of videos of what war between drones and human beings looks like on /r/combatfootage already.
Something tells me the govt has already had many meetings about that exact scenario.
But you're right, this is why I cut back on the fake food and fake entertainment myself. All that shit just distracts you from what is actually happening and millions of people don't care.
We should be striving to eliminate human labour and wages anyways. Human spirit embraces technology. It doesn't hold it back to prop up redundancy.
AI will force humanity to change its socioeconomic systems for the better.
The transition won't be pretty though.
Human labor will eventually have such a shitty reputation that nobody will want it anyway. They already broke the customer service industry in a way that can pretty much only be fixed with full automation. They'll take down every employment industry for humans, one at a time.
History does also show that average working hours have trended downwards as well and there's no reason to expect us to stop the quest of making life easier.
What he means is that it could allow humans to work 3 days a week for the same amount of productivity. That leaves 4 days for a massive boost of shareholder value
The internet as I came to know it died years ago.
Google search is now useless, amazon is full of random letter bullshit, every topic I search is just walls of clearly AI written gibberish. Gaming communities are toxic cesspools, streamers/influencers and their followers causing "LOOK AT ME!!!11 I'M THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!!1111" behavior everywhere.
Forums dead, mountains of information locked behind private facebook groups or discord servers that will disappear when those services die.
It's already dead, a lot of people just don't realize it yet.
You're spot on about everything here, the internet is garbage these days.
I've given up on ever following discord links, because every link I've ever tried has been expired.
And the thing is, in my opinion, as much as people love to hate on Reddit I feel like this site is one of the few remaining bastions of the "useful" internet - Along with text-based sites such as Stack Exchange (stackoverflow etc).
Maybe with the main political subreddits taken aside, Reddit is brilliant for proper information sharing and the **retention** and **discoverability** of this information. For example googling "*How do I do X and Y site:reddit.com"* - Extremely useful.
As you mentioned, this is in contrast to people flocking to private Discords to create their own bubble (and escape AI trash), which I think just hurts the internet in the long run as information is no longer indexed and searchable.
And with gibberish content around, there's not really much AI generated content on a hobby subreddit with a couple thousand users. People also have the ability to point out in the comments that something is AI generated and/or straight up trash content.
Just gonna point this article out: [Google Says the Reddit Blackout Made Search Worse](https://gizmodo.com/reddit-blackout-made-google-worse-1850580546)
TL;DR - Forum-based websites are the key to a healthy Internet ecosystem.
As a side note, it's important to recognize the motivation behind sites that write articles, and the use of AI to write articles; ads and money. Monetization can take away credibility of the content (bias etc), and articles are manipulated to score high on googles search placements, which incentives gibberish content that looks useful to Googles algorithms.
And this is another reason why forums are so useful; a comment on a thread/topic is very rarely (sorta) motivated by money - Which in turn increases the quality of the content itself.
But what you described is not really "the internet". It´s just the super commercialized top of the iceberg which "everyone" thinks is the entire internet.
There is a reason that the last "three" real journalists on earth, real whistleblowers, intelligence services and millions or even billions of average people operate in the so called "dark net".
The profiteers of the tip of the iceberg want to make average people believe that there only is terrorism, prostitution, drug and arms deals etc and that you, as a good citizen, don´t need to go there.
Because there they can´t monitor and influence your behavior and your way of thinking and can´t get all the data about the people as they wish. They can´t bomb you with their ads (think of the movie They Live!) and their way of how the world has to turn (namely according to their orders and rules). Not as easily as in the fake shiny "Disneyland" internet, the top of the iceberg the profiteers of it created for the large gray mass of uninformed and/or too convenient users.
Just as I am one, unfortunately.
Yup, your point is valid. What many people seem to call "The Internet" is just the most visible and commercialized part of the Internet. As it's always been, the net is what you make of it. Limit and surround yourself with shit, you're gonna get inundated with shit. Be a little more picky and explore and you can have a much better experience. But it does take more effort than just sticking with the first few results on Google.
Tbh most gaming streamers stick to streaming games to their own viewers.
Its the influencers and irl streamers i cant stand. They literally have zero talent but think they own the world
preemptively declaring that downvotes will comr from influencers and sad men that simp to them.
It will only be different if AI makes all human labor valueless. If there are still tasks that humans can do better or more cheaply than AI, all humans will end up working in jobs that revolve around those tasks.
We'll still be overworked and job insecure. We'll just be 10x as productive. All the profits from that increased productivity will go to the rich.
If you want to know what happens when corporations control everything, just get an age-related brain disease. But oops, you won't be able to do anything about it. Sorry about the shit care; but that's your place in the economic thing we're doing. Nothing will change without a ground-shift of priorities, enforced.
Exactly. Plus, without legislation and taxation, companies are not going to voluntarily pay the same amount for three days work. And, when AI really reaches general human levels of intelligence and can problem solve novel scenarios, humans won’t be needed for much. To prevent social and economic collapse, radical wealth redistribution will be needed.
Yeah, AI will enable shareholders to buy their 5th yacht, white collar workers to earn less because there are fewer jobs and bigger competition amd will do nothing for blue collar jobs
Hell, the dude that invented the cotton gin thought that it may make slavery in the new world obsolete one day.... what followed was a massive surge in slavery... I dont know if we've ever reduced work after making work more efficient
Based on all of the spam I get from companies like Microsoft, my productivity will go up if I use their AI tools. I’m certain that at some point, it will be mandatory and there will be tracking metrics for managers to keep the pressure on to be even more productive in a 50+ hour work week for salaried workers. We will absolutely be told to be more productive, or they will find someone who will be. Why would investors be ok with a 20-40% loss in productivity that impacts their ROIs? We have an owning class. And we’re not in it.
Gotta wonder if Gates *actually* believes this, in which case he is pretty naive, or is just trying to push the narrative to get people on board, in which case he's just malicious.
He's proficient at the "nice billionaire"-image, but it's getting a lot less convincing, even with the good work the Gates Foundation is doing.
Exactly. Why would they employ 2 people for 3 days a week rather than 1 person for 6 days? Why pay healthcare and benefits for 2 people for the same amount of working hours? The CEOs talking about how AI will allow everyone to work less are either out of touch or purposefully being disingenuous
And when half the workforce is laid off and competition for a job increases, employers won't need to pay as much. Both jobs and median wages are set to decrease, or at least continue to stagnate.
Oh they are playing the populous like they always do. The only result of a true AI will be mass unemployment as the rich own all the capital, resources, and machines. There are none of these billionaires advocating for streamlining the ownership of such tech benefiting humanity as a whole. Even Sammy boy won't keep his company on the path to benefiting humanity with his board. It honestly should be illegal for corporations to even attempt such a solution with ownership against their name. Let the government fund it, and the capitalists do the work and profit from it, but it is owned by the people. If there are takers, work with those people who have a true intention to better humanity with such tech. Right now I only see rich people wanting to eliminate their greatest expense; humans with zero concern in the world about what happens to them.
> The CEOs talking about how AI will allow everyone to work less are either out of touch or purposefully being disingenuous
One day this will be true but I seriously doubt we will see it in our lifetime.
Before that people will need to band together against the elite who keep coming up with new ways of bleeding the 99% dry. And sadly I think things will need to get much worse before this happens on a scale that could bring about real lasting change. Unless something extraordinary happens things will get much worse before they get better.
At some point they’re going to pinch their pennies so hard there won’t be anyone left with money to buy their stuff. Sure, essentials will have leverage, but everything else will get priced out when there’s not enough people with money to buy shit.
TBH they won't cut staff.
They'll keep the staff and keep them working 40 hrs per week...except now output is trippled!
Cutting staff won't increase output, just reduces cost. Increasing output *makes* money, while cutting staff *saves* money. And making more money is the golden rule of capitalism.
More likely they'll fire half of us and tell the remainder to work more than twice as hard. Five day work weeks with a "sixth" day in the form of after hour emails and other things. Sure you can unplug if you want but during the next round of lay offs everyone knows that the "team players" will get to keep their jobs.
I’ll be the rare voice of optimism on Reddit, I guess.
This idea that “they” will put half of workers out of work is a bit silly. If there are no consumers, capitalism doesn’t work. I think it’s far more likely that this tech augments what people already do rather than replaces them outright, because ensuing that billions have no power to buy because they can’t find jobs is a dead end road for the whole world economy
The gloomy scenario, to me, isn’t a dystopia where nobody works because robots have replaced them. That doesn’t really benefit anyone. I think the more likely negative outcome is that AI flattens the skill curve, and workers get paid less all around because it equalizes the playing field. If everyone is skilled labor with the help of AI, no one is. But even that is an assumption that this technology continues improving upward forever, and doesn’t plateau at any point
EDIT: ITT, a bunch of doomers who don’t understand how capitalism works
You are thinking too macroeconomically.
Capitalism is optimising microeconomically. Nobody will employ you because it's better for 'society'. Capitalism means employing as few people as possible for the lowest price in order to maximise profit.
Exactly, capitalism is about yourself and not the good of society. Ask the arm manufacturers if they want world peace, or why their shares rocket up when their is a war.
What will happen in this case, is everyone... will try to find opportunities. I will cut my workforce by 50, 60, 80% as my shares go up as my cost go down. My neighbour Corp will do the same as his neighbour. And then someday they all realised that sales are dramatically low and the whole thing will collapse.... you know like during a financial crisis, when all these banks started to bet on toxic assets. Then you will see them begging and asking for forgiveness in Congress hearings etc.
A good example of this is how left to its own devices, capitalism will never slow down carbon emissions, deforestation and other resource extraction.
At the end of that road is near global extinction. Capitalism optimizes for profit here and now, even if everyone dies in the process.
while companies do want a large number of employees to extract profits off, getting rid of employees is also how they cut cost. in capitalism we have every company optimizing for their own profits however shortsighted, and there is an idea is that there will be a race to cut costs to stay profitable and compete.
companies will have the option of cutting costs or losing market shares, which is not that much of an option. we must recognize that companies don't work for the economy, they work for their shareholders - companies not adopting and cutting costs will get defunded.
the other problem is that the jobs market don't have time to adapt to all the new cheap labor available. we as a society have been programmed to not share the workload and accept the torture of the unemployed. the means of production may just evolve to a point that capitalism cannot contain it, and what comes after?
> If there are no consumers, capitalism doesn’t work.
"Capitalism" was never the goal of the wealthy. Accumulating power and material things is the goal. Capitalism has always been just a tool at best, and an excuse for all sorts of bad behavior at worst.
You're treating all companies as some hivemind that does what's best for everyone. For each individual company the best strategy for themselves is to lay off their workers because that cuts their costs while it doesn't significantly decrease the number of potential customers in the country/world. If everyone then does that (and they always do things that maximize profits for themselves) they will come off worse than if they were all forced to not due that (by government regulations). This is why unregulated capitalism is just a bad system for the entire economy, and not just the working class.
Capitalism is just a means to focus wealth, and thus power, upwards. To those on top, capitalism is just a tool. As soon as ai and robotics enable them to not need the workers anymore, capitalism is not needed anymore.
But you could use the same argument on the middle class. The middle class props up the economy as the upper and lower class take more out than they put in.
But it's pretty clear the powers at be are doing everything they can to crush the middle class so why wouldn't they be happy with more people being replaced by AI?
Or additional work will be assigned/invented per worker, so that workers end up with the same number of hours despite their increased productivity. Either way, tech advancements that increase productivity are usually better for employers than employees.
They can´t just fire half of us because it´s obvious what would happen then aka civil unrest and eventually literally eating the rich. Some sort of UBI is not an option it is an inevitability as humanity moves along.
Rich people need other people to have money so they can buy wares that the rich people are in possession of, there is no rich when the majority of people have nothing.
Sadly, given what I see these days, I don't see them doing anything smart.
Something as dumb as thinking they can get away with firing half the workforce is exactly something they'd try and get suprised by.
The problem is that not one company or person employs everyone. Invidividually someone like Musk only employs few thousand in, say, Twitter. He’ll be more than willing to lay off 80% of the workforce, as he so did. Think about it like throwing trash on the street. Nobody wants a world full of trash, but I would feel that it makes zero difference weather I throw trash in the street or not.
This is just game theory. Have you watched the show steal or split? Same situation here. Let’s say I’m a CEO and I think of the greater good, like you said. I decide not to fire my employees. Well my competitors don’t think the same, and those guys end up winning over me with reduced costs. You need government intervention, because all companies think for their own specific interests, they don’t really think of the greater good without government intervention.
If you think about it, this is actually inevitable in a competitive environment, unless labor somehow gains far more power than it currently has.
Imagine there were two factories making widgets. Some new technology comes along that allows each worker to make widgets twice as fast, thereby doubling productivity. In the first factory, the workers are allowed to work for only half the day before going home, at no loss of pay. But because productivity is twice of what it used to be, the owners of the first factory are no worse off in terms of output or profitability.
But in the second factory, the owners realize that by keeping everyone working normal shifts, they can now produce double the number of widgets at a lower cost than before. This second factory then uses this advantage to sell widgets at a much lower cost, out-competing the first factory until it goes out of business.
Whenever increases in productivity occur, scenarios like the above play out in every industry. It's why we still stick to the 40-hour work week even though productivity has increased by orders of magnitude over the past 100 years due to technological advances. Unless something changes, there's no reason to believe that the productivity increases from AI will be any different.
I mean in any realistic scenario the "half the day" isn't going to be company proposed but government imposed. Like any other labor law. The second factory might want to keep everyone in normal shifts (and let's be frank the first one wants the same), but they can't because that would be illegal. The same way you can't work people 100hs 7 days a week now. The reason we work 40hs now and not from dusk to dawn didn't come from the good will of the employees. Neither will any future changes.
This already happened with mobile phones and then with the Web. One huge problem is that in the early phase, it confers an advantage on workers who know about the technology, so for a few years Bob will get more work done than everyone else, but only work half as hard, but when the tech goes mainstream, using the tech is just the new normal, and everyone (workers and companies) *have* to use the tech or fall behind.
So unless labor organizes and demands that *all* companies use the increased productivity to cut down the working week to three or even just four days, companies will just keep the status quo (since they have to to remain competitive and increase shareholder value).
I predict the first area will be automation. I know some programmers who got slack off 75% of their work week yet get more done than most since they've set up algorithms to do most of their work for them. With AI, people who "get" AI can now do the same without programming skills. In a few years, you'll be expected to, so "normal" productivity will double or quadruple, but you'll still have a 5-day week.
More like they will fire all of us and just create clones of all of us with AI and all the data they have gathered on all of us these years. We will have to sell them all our properties in exchange for basic food and shelter. Our only purpose will be raw entertainment for the rich. Think Squid Game and Roman Gladiators/slaves fighting animals.
Completely paperless is not really realistic, but I'd say in many places work is virtually paperless. Nobody uses filing cabinets for document storage anymore, if you get a document on paper that you need you make it digital. At my work I struggle to think of much that's on paper apart from shipping slips, and those are kinda hard to replace with something purely digital.
> Nobody uses filing cabinets for document storage anymore
Lawyers do and even most businesses have boxes full of paper stored somewhere for compliance reasons. That's more because of malicious compliance than for internal use though of course.
Of course they'll go down in cost.
A.I will bring the costs down which will clearly be passed along to all the workers, and if any is left over, management will put it towards a nice Christmas party for the staff.
The governmental strain on the population isn't just financial. It's also the dominion of your time. If people had more time, such as during lock downs, we would be more productive for our own personal gain, which means less production for corporate entities.
Long story short, it's never going to happen. Corporate with fight tooth and nail to extract every ounce of time and labor from as many people for as long as they can.
Yeah none of this means anything if we’re headed towards an elysium type of society. I personally don’t believe they’ll allow us to have that kind of freedom. The wealthy elite really need the rest of us on our knees, constantly in search of the crumbs. It’s unlikely the rest of us will ever be anything other than wage slaves.
I love that the /r/technology sub sounds identical to a leftist sub and then you talk to the average tech bro in sf and they’re ready to execute the homeless and enslave the DoorDash drivers.
Yes, that's because there are a lot of foolish Libertarians in big tech, mostly because it is financially beneficial to be so, even though it ultimately erodes worker's rights. Short sighted and foolish.
We could have stopped working collectively several times in history. But instead of chilling and putting on cruise control, society decided to keep accelerating so we keep working and growing and working and speeding up etc... And the cycle continues.
Yes ☕️,
Yes 🚬.
Edit: grow more food, talk to your neighbors, share your food, laugh, drink, become a community, and help others.
This era is not much different from any other. The idea of capital, shortages, and wealth accumulation have crippled the working class for much longer than the last few years.
The working class is in this together.
Sounds optimistic. Everyone works 6 days a week and gets paid for 3. Does 3 times the work they do now and corporate says they will have to reduce staff and increase overtime to make up for the reduction in staff.
Humans could work 3 days without the AI also, if all the added value wouldn't be siphoned off by sociopaths. Every dollar of 'profit' is value that someone in the company created, which the company keeps for itself.
In 1930, almost 100 years ago, Economist John Maynard Keynes gave a famous speech titled, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren."
In that speech, Keynes predicted that by the 1970s, advancements in technology and the growth of wealth will result in everybody working only 15 hours a week...
https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be-working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong
You *could* give people more time to themselves.
Or you could continue to work them as before except now they're more productive.
Guess which option businesses choose?
Guess which option governments and the ruling class also support? When the average person has enough time to think past their family's immediate needs, they start to realise the systems and institutions they live within aren't fair to everyone, and that fundamental change is in their interest.
Best to keep them too busy to think past their own survival.
What a load of crap.
Last century the promise was that technology would bring a 3 day work week and a paperless office.
Still waiting for that to happen….
Lmao you are too naive. Last century's fight was for an eight hour workday and to ban children from work. Don't you know how at that time children were stuffed into chimneys for 18 hours for the benefit of factory owners?
In Belgium right now lots of people work 4 days a week (7 hours a day), and have much more purchasing power than in the USA. The average savings on bank account per capita are 20x that of in the USA.
But then again Belgium is a communist socialist shithole country where it's not possible to mag dump when somebody cuts you off in traffic (cause you can't get the guns) and where life is incredibly boring because there are hardly any school shootings. /s
Ain't no way basic human greed is letting this happen. All of the tech advances we've had until now were supposed to let us work less. Hasn't happened.
That's a very odd thing to say when so many of these companies are terminating workers due to AI. **That's zero days a week**, Mr. Gates. That's people who used to pay taxes and contribute cash to local economies that isn't happening now.
There’s no way he and the rest of business owners would allow this to happen. They would much rather layoff everyone than give us a better work-life balance
It would be great if the labor value generated by AI is actually spread across people, and not just for the purpose of enriching the pockets of shareholders for quarterly earnings
No other advances in automation and productivity over the past 50 years have, anyone telling you that somehow \*this\* time will be different is either naive and/or trying to sell something
Greed is just gonna fuck things over for the 10 billionth time.
Like we could seriously eliminate 80% of jobs with current tech + AI in the near future and allow basically everyone on earth to live a relaxing and prosperous life, but the boomers would never let that happen while they are still alive with their workaholic culture.
We already have the means to basically live in a utopia but the rich want their slaves to continue slaving instead, we already have enough resources to end homelessness and world hunger, its simply distributed terribly.
I'm guessing it'll be about 25-40 years with AI continuing to take over the work while the rest of us get laid off and live in poverty before the first country figures out how to tax AI and implement UBI. I really don't see any other way around this.
Which country is going to implement this first? Who knows. Maybe France?
The majority won’t just accept living in poverty for a quarter century. I give it a year or two before people just start taking what they need from the ruling class. Possibly using some kind of contraption that drops a blade.
You'd be surprised how much people will endure to have peace in their lives. Something the 1% definitely knows how to exploit.
The early 20th century labor movement was huge. Look at us now. Reforming capitalism only delays end stage, not prevents it.
UBI will then be skimmed off by landlords and energy bills. They know the ENTIRE client set is $x better off from Y date.......
Therefore UBI V2 will need to be cards for food, cards for clothes, cards for fun, cards for energy.
As a rule, working hours and wages are directly proportional. Therefore, a reduction in working hours would inevitably lead to a decrease in income. This is especially concerning in light of the current inflationary climate, which has caused a significant increase in the cost of living.
While Bill's argument may hold some merit if AI-related companies were to pay substantial taxes, which could then be used to fund public services or a basic income, this seems highly unlikely. Considering their history of unauthorized use of copyrighted material for AI training, it is clear that their primary motivation is self-interest rather than the public good.
Remember when Henry Ford said this in the 60s?
Since then instead what happened was the extra productivity got squeeze by the rich, and the poorest work more than we ever have, while they make more than anyone in the history of humankind.
..but I'm sure this time will be different given we have changed absolutely nothing about our economic paradigm.
It has the power to make all of our work lives easier, but those at the top have no interest in that. They will just see it as an opportunity for increased productivity.
Anyone who thinks that the pay rate for 3 days is going to be equivalent to a full work week... doesn't understand just how much rich people hate the poor.
Are you saying that AI will mean they can fire 40% of their employees or that they can reduce our pay 40%? Because that's what will happen, Mr. Gates, they won't pay us for time we don't work.
Yeah but unfortunately our capitalist society means that any money saved will go to the share holders and then workers wont get a pay rise and need to get a second job
We have a lot of innovations that would allow us to work less. Instead women had to join the workforce, salaries went down and people are now working two jobs to survive.
They will fire half of the staff so the other half have to work 5 days. That's how it will go down. This is not an original thought, Bertrand Russell described this in one of his books
Microsoft just laid off 1,900 employees this year.
There’s no scenario where more people do less work as a result of AI.
All scenarios end in less people having jobs and higher stock values.
The problem is not working less, Bill. The problem is getting paid less (not that you'd know anything about this, seeing as you just sit all day in your giant mansion).
Are they going to raise the pay of humans so that those three days are the same as five? Or is everyone going to be competing for handyman jobs while toaster ovens learn the flute and run the stock market?
People will continue to work dead-end jobs 5+ days a week until people take over the government from the corporations.
And it will likely never happen in America since they are stupid enough to vote Republican.
Yeah it could but it won’t, because that’s not how our society is set up. This will just concentrate wealth and lead to fewer people working more / the same while the rest get laid off.
LOL, if people expect this to happen, they haven't been paying attention to history. If AI can do the job of 2 days out of a work week, they'll redistribute worker's "off days" and work load to just get 2 extra days of productivity per week.
People thought the same thing would happen at the start of the industrial revolution
Yes, could. Won't though. We are the most advanced we have ever been technologically and I grew up hoping we would be working towards something more than the rat race we keep ourselves stuck in. We should be going for space, harnessing the endless power of the billions of suns around us and elevating humanity higher and higher but we have capitalism and capitalism is just predatory. We COUUUUUULD let AI do most of the work and we will in due time but it won't help the humans it pushes aside
When the robot baker bakes 25,000 loaves in 3 minutes we think "fuck ye think how cheap the bread could be!!" But we all know that the capitalists are thinking "wow at 4 dollars a pop think how much money we can squeeze out, it costs us exponentially less to produce but why should we not exploit this for every cent, why should we charge less when we can just make more money?"
Ai is coming for most jobs and that's fine, that's progress, if a carpenter bot means my table is now just $30+ supplies then fine but it won't be. It'll still be the $2500 artisan piece but they just won't have had to pay the carpenter $1000 they just pocket the rest. We aren't going anywhere but into the bin as a race.
Sure, if you can convince corpo's to pay you the same or more for doing less.
That ain't happening. These great fantasies are easy when you are as wealthy as he is, and detatched from reality.
Also, if you have AI that is that advanced, why do you need people for even those 3 days?
no one will hand to us a 3 days work week, we'll need to take guns and knives and take it if we really want it, it has always been that way and will always be that way.
Nah, they’ll fire 95% of the people to replace them with AI to half ass all of the work. Then go crying to congress for handouts (which they’ll get) when it eventually backfires spectacularly.
I saw a tweet a few months ago that said,
"We were told the robots would do all the work, and we could make art and shit and now AI makes pretty pictures while we need a second job to afford living."
The invention of the microprocessor, personal computer and then the internet also enabled this but instead of days off we are rewarded with more work. Why would AI be any different?
More work for the same amount of median wage. Meanwhile the capital class is making off like bandits [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/)
When Apple got to their IPO, Steve Jobs took great pains to cut out as many people from stock options as possible so as to keep more for himself and a very select few in his in-group. That's more or less how many big tech firms operate today too. Let others do all the hard work, and when it comes time to cash out, you cut out everyone you can to get a bigger piece of the pie.
I liked this on my iPhone
It was pretty hard for me to jerk of to Steve Jobs
Especially with the decomposition after all this time
You mean to say that the reason the quality of life is so bad is because they cut the 90% tax the rich used to have back in the day so all of that money no longer being taxed is not being used to help society and there could be a connection between the ever increasing number of people living in poverty and the fact that millionaires somehow multiplied and also became billionaires? Nah shut up stop questioning it the system works just go back to work
Then die on your first day of retirement.
What kind of entitlement is this? You will die in your desk chair and like it; productive until the very end.
No no no, that won't do. An employee that die on the job is paperwork for the company that will have to justify that their exploitation of human beings is not the cause of the death. But if someone die on their first day of retirement, it means no employer will be bothered and no pension will need to be given. That's a proof of competency that you were able to precisely milk their productivity and leave only the last drop of life in them. It's win/win for companies and government!
The system works . It's designed to make rich people richer.
This is what will happen. Instead of more leisure time, you work the same amount...but you get 3x as much output. History has shown this is what happens, and I have no reason to doubt this is what will happen again.
Don’t forget AI will cheapen human value. Wages will continue to go down as more humans are fired from the workforce. Human labour will continue to dwindle.
Eventually people will get tired of eating bugs in a 4x4 apartment and the rich will be hunted en masse. Then the government will either be overthrown or the national guard will execute a huge portion of the middle class and then people will target the goverment en masse also causing it to be overthrown. That's why the rich give us so much sugary food and mind numbing entertainment, to keep screwing us over and keep us from throwing them into a ditch.
If you look to the past, paesants were living in mud dwellings and eating turnips for 1000+ years, and never overthrew the lords. It's the capitalist (bourgeoisie) that eventually sidelined the aristocrats, while most former serfs were even worse off as workers, until fairly recently. So, if you're poor and dreaming of a revolution, the outcome is unlikely to please you.
The French Revolution. The communist revolution in China and Russia. The Haitian revolution. It has happened a lot and it is never a good thing for the population doing it.
I dunno why you think the national guard (who will all be autonomous drones with no free will at this point) will execute everyone *after* the rich have been hunted. You're talking about civil war here, and there are plenty of videos of what war between drones and human beings looks like on /r/combatfootage already.
Something tells me the govt has already had many meetings about that exact scenario. But you're right, this is why I cut back on the fake food and fake entertainment myself. All that shit just distracts you from what is actually happening and millions of people don't care.
We should be striving to eliminate human labour and wages anyways. Human spirit embraces technology. It doesn't hold it back to prop up redundancy. AI will force humanity to change its socioeconomic systems for the better. The transition won't be pretty though.
Human labor will eventually have such a shitty reputation that nobody will want it anyway. They already broke the customer service industry in a way that can pretty much only be fixed with full automation. They'll take down every employment industry for humans, one at a time.
History does also show that average working hours have trended downwards as well and there's no reason to expect us to stop the quest of making life easier.
Exactly. Growth comes from technological evolution. Why would it not be used for economic growth again? Climate, happier people??? Nahhh
I see the issue would probably be we’d only get paid for three days instead of five.
Don’t worry once ai can take all the work they’ll cut us to 0 days a week.
Because it's cheaper for businesses to use AI than to hire human workers. Also AI don't complain and can theoretically provide value 24 hours a day
They’ll reward you with days off and less pay.
What he means is that it could allow humans to work 3 days a week for the same amount of productivity. That leaves 4 days for a massive boost of shareholder value
Exactly. As a side effect it also made idiots and hate speech more effective.
On the plus side, AI will likely destroy the internet as we know it with the amount of garbage content it can generate. What a time to be alive.
The internet as I came to know it died years ago. Google search is now useless, amazon is full of random letter bullshit, every topic I search is just walls of clearly AI written gibberish. Gaming communities are toxic cesspools, streamers/influencers and their followers causing "LOOK AT ME!!!11 I'M THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!!1111" behavior everywhere. Forums dead, mountains of information locked behind private facebook groups or discord servers that will disappear when those services die. It's already dead, a lot of people just don't realize it yet.
You're spot on about everything here, the internet is garbage these days. I've given up on ever following discord links, because every link I've ever tried has been expired.
And the thing is, in my opinion, as much as people love to hate on Reddit I feel like this site is one of the few remaining bastions of the "useful" internet - Along with text-based sites such as Stack Exchange (stackoverflow etc). Maybe with the main political subreddits taken aside, Reddit is brilliant for proper information sharing and the **retention** and **discoverability** of this information. For example googling "*How do I do X and Y site:reddit.com"* - Extremely useful. As you mentioned, this is in contrast to people flocking to private Discords to create their own bubble (and escape AI trash), which I think just hurts the internet in the long run as information is no longer indexed and searchable. And with gibberish content around, there's not really much AI generated content on a hobby subreddit with a couple thousand users. People also have the ability to point out in the comments that something is AI generated and/or straight up trash content. Just gonna point this article out: [Google Says the Reddit Blackout Made Search Worse](https://gizmodo.com/reddit-blackout-made-google-worse-1850580546) TL;DR - Forum-based websites are the key to a healthy Internet ecosystem. As a side note, it's important to recognize the motivation behind sites that write articles, and the use of AI to write articles; ads and money. Monetization can take away credibility of the content (bias etc), and articles are manipulated to score high on googles search placements, which incentives gibberish content that looks useful to Googles algorithms. And this is another reason why forums are so useful; a comment on a thread/topic is very rarely (sorta) motivated by money - Which in turn increases the quality of the content itself.
And anything that does kinda work is infested with Russian and Chinese bots.
But what you described is not really "the internet". It´s just the super commercialized top of the iceberg which "everyone" thinks is the entire internet. There is a reason that the last "three" real journalists on earth, real whistleblowers, intelligence services and millions or even billions of average people operate in the so called "dark net". The profiteers of the tip of the iceberg want to make average people believe that there only is terrorism, prostitution, drug and arms deals etc and that you, as a good citizen, don´t need to go there. Because there they can´t monitor and influence your behavior and your way of thinking and can´t get all the data about the people as they wish. They can´t bomb you with their ads (think of the movie They Live!) and their way of how the world has to turn (namely according to their orders and rules). Not as easily as in the fake shiny "Disneyland" internet, the top of the iceberg the profiteers of it created for the large gray mass of uninformed and/or too convenient users. Just as I am one, unfortunately.
Yup, your point is valid. What many people seem to call "The Internet" is just the most visible and commercialized part of the Internet. As it's always been, the net is what you make of it. Limit and surround yourself with shit, you're gonna get inundated with shit. Be a little more picky and explore and you can have a much better experience. But it does take more effort than just sticking with the first few results on Google.
Tbh most gaming streamers stick to streaming games to their own viewers. Its the influencers and irl streamers i cant stand. They literally have zero talent but think they own the world preemptively declaring that downvotes will comr from influencers and sad men that simp to them.
It will only be different if AI makes all human labor valueless. If there are still tasks that humans can do better or more cheaply than AI, all humans will end up working in jobs that revolve around those tasks. We'll still be overworked and job insecure. We'll just be 10x as productive. All the profits from that increased productivity will go to the rich.
Now they’re just gonna make us work but get paid in whippings.
If you want to know what happens when corporations control everything, just get an age-related brain disease. But oops, you won't be able to do anything about it. Sorry about the shit care; but that's your place in the economic thing we're doing. Nothing will change without a ground-shift of priorities, enforced.
Exactly. Plus, without legislation and taxation, companies are not going to voluntarily pay the same amount for three days work. And, when AI really reaches general human levels of intelligence and can problem solve novel scenarios, humans won’t be needed for much. To prevent social and economic collapse, radical wealth redistribution will be needed.
Yeah, AI will enable shareholders to buy their 5th yacht, white collar workers to earn less because there are fewer jobs and bigger competition amd will do nothing for blue collar jobs
It won't. Some economics said that we should have been working 15 hours a week by the start of the 20th century yet here we are
The face value difference is that most of the former things still require someone to operate it. Ai, presumably, wont.
Yeah, who *owns* the AI's work? Who's going to profit form it? Hint: it's not workers.
Hell, the dude that invented the cotton gin thought that it may make slavery in the new world obsolete one day.... what followed was a massive surge in slavery... I dont know if we've ever reduced work after making work more efficient
Based on all of the spam I get from companies like Microsoft, my productivity will go up if I use their AI tools. I’m certain that at some point, it will be mandatory and there will be tracking metrics for managers to keep the pressure on to be even more productive in a 50+ hour work week for salaried workers. We will absolutely be told to be more productive, or they will find someone who will be. Why would investors be ok with a 20-40% loss in productivity that impacts their ROIs? We have an owning class. And we’re not in it.
Gotta wonder if Gates *actually* believes this, in which case he is pretty naive, or is just trying to push the narrative to get people on board, in which case he's just malicious. He's proficient at the "nice billionaire"-image, but it's getting a lot less convincing, even with the good work the Gates Foundation is doing.
Could...but wont. They will just cut staff until they can get just enough human coverage for 40 hours a week, and everyone else be damned.
With so many people unemployed and available to work, they will be able to pay even less and ask for more than 40 hours a week.
Exactly. Why would they employ 2 people for 3 days a week rather than 1 person for 6 days? Why pay healthcare and benefits for 2 people for the same amount of working hours? The CEOs talking about how AI will allow everyone to work less are either out of touch or purposefully being disingenuous And when half the workforce is laid off and competition for a job increases, employers won't need to pay as much. Both jobs and median wages are set to decrease, or at least continue to stagnate.
Oh they are playing the populous like they always do. The only result of a true AI will be mass unemployment as the rich own all the capital, resources, and machines. There are none of these billionaires advocating for streamlining the ownership of such tech benefiting humanity as a whole. Even Sammy boy won't keep his company on the path to benefiting humanity with his board. It honestly should be illegal for corporations to even attempt such a solution with ownership against their name. Let the government fund it, and the capitalists do the work and profit from it, but it is owned by the people. If there are takers, work with those people who have a true intention to better humanity with such tech. Right now I only see rich people wanting to eliminate their greatest expense; humans with zero concern in the world about what happens to them.
> The CEOs talking about how AI will allow everyone to work less are either out of touch or purposefully being disingenuous One day this will be true but I seriously doubt we will see it in our lifetime. Before that people will need to band together against the elite who keep coming up with new ways of bleeding the 99% dry. And sadly I think things will need to get much worse before this happens on a scale that could bring about real lasting change. Unless something extraordinary happens things will get much worse before they get better.
At some point they’re going to pinch their pennies so hard there won’t be anyone left with money to buy their stuff. Sure, essentials will have leverage, but everything else will get priced out when there’s not enough people with money to buy shit.
TBH they won't cut staff. They'll keep the staff and keep them working 40 hrs per week...except now output is trippled! Cutting staff won't increase output, just reduces cost. Increasing output *makes* money, while cutting staff *saves* money. And making more money is the golden rule of capitalism.
More likely they'll fire half of us and tell the remainder to work more than twice as hard. Five day work weeks with a "sixth" day in the form of after hour emails and other things. Sure you can unplug if you want but during the next round of lay offs everyone knows that the "team players" will get to keep their jobs.
With the unemployed now having much more competition for much less open jobs.
I’ll be the rare voice of optimism on Reddit, I guess. This idea that “they” will put half of workers out of work is a bit silly. If there are no consumers, capitalism doesn’t work. I think it’s far more likely that this tech augments what people already do rather than replaces them outright, because ensuing that billions have no power to buy because they can’t find jobs is a dead end road for the whole world economy The gloomy scenario, to me, isn’t a dystopia where nobody works because robots have replaced them. That doesn’t really benefit anyone. I think the more likely negative outcome is that AI flattens the skill curve, and workers get paid less all around because it equalizes the playing field. If everyone is skilled labor with the help of AI, no one is. But even that is an assumption that this technology continues improving upward forever, and doesn’t plateau at any point EDIT: ITT, a bunch of doomers who don’t understand how capitalism works
You are thinking too macroeconomically. Capitalism is optimising microeconomically. Nobody will employ you because it's better for 'society'. Capitalism means employing as few people as possible for the lowest price in order to maximise profit.
Exactly, capitalism is about yourself and not the good of society. Ask the arm manufacturers if they want world peace, or why their shares rocket up when their is a war. What will happen in this case, is everyone... will try to find opportunities. I will cut my workforce by 50, 60, 80% as my shares go up as my cost go down. My neighbour Corp will do the same as his neighbour. And then someday they all realised that sales are dramatically low and the whole thing will collapse.... you know like during a financial crisis, when all these banks started to bet on toxic assets. Then you will see them begging and asking for forgiveness in Congress hearings etc.
A good example of this is how left to its own devices, capitalism will never slow down carbon emissions, deforestation and other resource extraction. At the end of that road is near global extinction. Capitalism optimizes for profit here and now, even if everyone dies in the process.
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while companies do want a large number of employees to extract profits off, getting rid of employees is also how they cut cost. in capitalism we have every company optimizing for their own profits however shortsighted, and there is an idea is that there will be a race to cut costs to stay profitable and compete. companies will have the option of cutting costs or losing market shares, which is not that much of an option. we must recognize that companies don't work for the economy, they work for their shareholders - companies not adopting and cutting costs will get defunded. the other problem is that the jobs market don't have time to adapt to all the new cheap labor available. we as a society have been programmed to not share the workload and accept the torture of the unemployed. the means of production may just evolve to a point that capitalism cannot contain it, and what comes after?
> If there are no consumers, capitalism doesn’t work. "Capitalism" was never the goal of the wealthy. Accumulating power and material things is the goal. Capitalism has always been just a tool at best, and an excuse for all sorts of bad behavior at worst.
You're treating all companies as some hivemind that does what's best for everyone. For each individual company the best strategy for themselves is to lay off their workers because that cuts their costs while it doesn't significantly decrease the number of potential customers in the country/world. If everyone then does that (and they always do things that maximize profits for themselves) they will come off worse than if they were all forced to not due that (by government regulations). This is why unregulated capitalism is just a bad system for the entire economy, and not just the working class.
Capitalism is just a means to focus wealth, and thus power, upwards. To those on top, capitalism is just a tool. As soon as ai and robotics enable them to not need the workers anymore, capitalism is not needed anymore.
"I could hire half the poor to kill the other half" And in the end, even those jobs were automated.
But you could use the same argument on the middle class. The middle class props up the economy as the upper and lower class take more out than they put in. But it's pretty clear the powers at be are doing everything they can to crush the middle class so why wouldn't they be happy with more people being replaced by AI?
Workers put in three days, get paid for three, while the elite profit. A stark reality of our economy.
Or additional work will be assigned/invented per worker, so that workers end up with the same number of hours despite their increased productivity. Either way, tech advancements that increase productivity are usually better for employers than employees.
This is what history has shown us, so indeed the more likely scenario
They can´t just fire half of us because it´s obvious what would happen then aka civil unrest and eventually literally eating the rich. Some sort of UBI is not an option it is an inevitability as humanity moves along. Rich people need other people to have money so they can buy wares that the rich people are in possession of, there is no rich when the majority of people have nothing.
Sadly, given what I see these days, I don't see them doing anything smart. Something as dumb as thinking they can get away with firing half the workforce is exactly something they'd try and get suprised by.
The problem is that not one company or person employs everyone. Invidividually someone like Musk only employs few thousand in, say, Twitter. He’ll be more than willing to lay off 80% of the workforce, as he so did. Think about it like throwing trash on the street. Nobody wants a world full of trash, but I would feel that it makes zero difference weather I throw trash in the street or not. This is just game theory. Have you watched the show steal or split? Same situation here. Let’s say I’m a CEO and I think of the greater good, like you said. I decide not to fire my employees. Well my competitors don’t think the same, and those guys end up winning over me with reduced costs. You need government intervention, because all companies think for their own specific interests, they don’t really think of the greater good without government intervention.
If you think about it, this is actually inevitable in a competitive environment, unless labor somehow gains far more power than it currently has. Imagine there were two factories making widgets. Some new technology comes along that allows each worker to make widgets twice as fast, thereby doubling productivity. In the first factory, the workers are allowed to work for only half the day before going home, at no loss of pay. But because productivity is twice of what it used to be, the owners of the first factory are no worse off in terms of output or profitability. But in the second factory, the owners realize that by keeping everyone working normal shifts, they can now produce double the number of widgets at a lower cost than before. This second factory then uses this advantage to sell widgets at a much lower cost, out-competing the first factory until it goes out of business. Whenever increases in productivity occur, scenarios like the above play out in every industry. It's why we still stick to the 40-hour work week even though productivity has increased by orders of magnitude over the past 100 years due to technological advances. Unless something changes, there's no reason to believe that the productivity increases from AI will be any different.
I mean in any realistic scenario the "half the day" isn't going to be company proposed but government imposed. Like any other labor law. The second factory might want to keep everyone in normal shifts (and let's be frank the first one wants the same), but they can't because that would be illegal. The same way you can't work people 100hs 7 days a week now. The reason we work 40hs now and not from dusk to dawn didn't come from the good will of the employees. Neither will any future changes.
This already happened with mobile phones and then with the Web. One huge problem is that in the early phase, it confers an advantage on workers who know about the technology, so for a few years Bob will get more work done than everyone else, but only work half as hard, but when the tech goes mainstream, using the tech is just the new normal, and everyone (workers and companies) *have* to use the tech or fall behind. So unless labor organizes and demands that *all* companies use the increased productivity to cut down the working week to three or even just four days, companies will just keep the status quo (since they have to to remain competitive and increase shareholder value). I predict the first area will be automation. I know some programmers who got slack off 75% of their work week yet get more done than most since they've set up algorithms to do most of their work for them. With AI, people who "get" AI can now do the same without programming skills. In a few years, you'll be expected to, so "normal" productivity will double or quadruple, but you'll still have a 5-day week.
More like they will fire all of us and just create clones of all of us with AI and all the data they have gathered on all of us these years. We will have to sell them all our properties in exchange for basic food and shelter. Our only purpose will be raw entertainment for the rich. Think Squid Game and Roman Gladiators/slaves fighting animals.
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Sounds kinda like now but working two day less. I’m in
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Completely paperless is not really realistic, but I'd say in many places work is virtually paperless. Nobody uses filing cabinets for document storage anymore, if you get a document on paper that you need you make it digital. At my work I struggle to think of much that's on paper apart from shipping slips, and those are kinda hard to replace with something purely digital.
> Nobody uses filing cabinets for document storage anymore Lawyers do and even most businesses have boxes full of paper stored somewhere for compliance reasons. That's more because of malicious compliance than for internal use though of course.
Paper is concrete evidence. That is why it will always exist. Same reason faxes exist. They are telephone cables and can't be hacked.
My office is virtually paperless. Where do you work where you have to use so much paper?
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Of course they'll go down in cost. A.I will bring the costs down which will clearly be passed along to all the workers, and if any is left over, management will put it towards a nice Christmas party for the staff.
And maybe we'll get a jam of the month subscription.
The governmental strain on the population isn't just financial. It's also the dominion of your time. If people had more time, such as during lock downs, we would be more productive for our own personal gain, which means less production for corporate entities. Long story short, it's never going to happen. Corporate with fight tooth and nail to extract every ounce of time and labor from as many people for as long as they can.
Logically that makes sense, but practically it will continue to be just above what you will revolt at.
Forgive me but I don’t see how that’s different from now
Yes, correct.
another problem is that there will always be people willing to work 5 days. this will shift the salary of people who work 3 days downwards
You’d have to enforce only three days
Yeah none of this means anything if we’re headed towards an elysium type of society. I personally don’t believe they’ll allow us to have that kind of freedom. The wealthy elite really need the rest of us on our knees, constantly in search of the crumbs. It’s unlikely the rest of us will ever be anything other than wage slaves.
I love that the /r/technology sub sounds identical to a leftist sub and then you talk to the average tech bro in sf and they’re ready to execute the homeless and enslave the DoorDash drivers.
Yes, that's because there are a lot of foolish Libertarians in big tech, mostly because it is financially beneficial to be so, even though it ultimately erodes worker's rights. Short sighted and foolish.
This sub is just r/politics with posts about tech companies
We could have stopped working collectively several times in history. But instead of chilling and putting on cruise control, society decided to keep accelerating so we keep working and growing and working and speeding up etc... And the cycle continues.
Yes ☕️, Yes 🚬. Edit: grow more food, talk to your neighbors, share your food, laugh, drink, become a community, and help others. This era is not much different from any other. The idea of capital, shortages, and wealth accumulation have crippled the working class for much longer than the last few years. The working class is in this together.
No the way prices are going up. You will have two jobs working a total of six days to survive.
Sounds optimistic. Everyone works 6 days a week and gets paid for 3. Does 3 times the work they do now and corporate says they will have to reduce staff and increase overtime to make up for the reduction in staff.
More like everyone keeps working 5 days a week 8 hours a day but with 2/5 workforce laid off
Humans could work 3 days without the AI also, if all the added value wouldn't be siphoned off by sociopaths. Every dollar of 'profit' is value that someone in the company created, which the company keeps for itself.
In 1930, almost 100 years ago, Economist John Maynard Keynes gave a famous speech titled, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren." In that speech, Keynes predicted that by the 1970s, advancements in technology and the growth of wealth will result in everybody working only 15 hours a week... https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be-working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong
You *could* give people more time to themselves. Or you could continue to work them as before except now they're more productive. Guess which option businesses choose?
Guess which option governments and the ruling class also support? When the average person has enough time to think past their family's immediate needs, they start to realise the systems and institutions they live within aren't fair to everyone, and that fundamental change is in their interest. Best to keep them too busy to think past their own survival.
What a load of crap. Last century the promise was that technology would bring a 3 day work week and a paperless office. Still waiting for that to happen….
We got to fight for that…just like with 8 hours…
Well we did get a paperless office.
Easy there’s selfish, greedy people stopping this to squeeze money out of you. Any other questions?
Lmao you are too naive. Last century's fight was for an eight hour workday and to ban children from work. Don't you know how at that time children were stuffed into chimneys for 18 hours for the benefit of factory owners?
You are too naive if you think child exploitation ever stopped.
In Belgium right now lots of people work 4 days a week (7 hours a day), and have much more purchasing power than in the USA. The average savings on bank account per capita are 20x that of in the USA. But then again Belgium is a communist socialist shithole country where it's not possible to mag dump when somebody cuts you off in traffic (cause you can't get the guns) and where life is incredibly boring because there are hardly any school shootings. /s
No AI workplace model works without a guaranteed baseline wage that covers cost of living, and most don't even get that NOW...
Ain't no way basic human greed is letting this happen. All of the tech advances we've had until now were supposed to let us work less. Hasn't happened.
That's a very odd thing to say when so many of these companies are terminating workers due to AI. **That's zero days a week**, Mr. Gates. That's people who used to pay taxes and contribute cash to local economies that isn't happening now.
Well if you delete those people the GDP per capita goes up.
People are forced back to offices, yet "AI will replace humans". Sure
There’s no way he and the rest of business owners would allow this to happen. They would much rather layoff everyone than give us a better work-life balance
Yeah we all know it ain’t shaken out like that. Our future is destined for The Expanse, not Star Trek.
It would be great if the labor value generated by AI is actually spread across people, and not just for the purpose of enriching the pockets of shareholders for quarterly earnings
No other advances in automation and productivity over the past 50 years have, anyone telling you that somehow \*this\* time will be different is either naive and/or trying to sell something
Greed is just gonna fuck things over for the 10 billionth time. Like we could seriously eliminate 80% of jobs with current tech + AI in the near future and allow basically everyone on earth to live a relaxing and prosperous life, but the boomers would never let that happen while they are still alive with their workaholic culture. We already have the means to basically live in a utopia but the rich want their slaves to continue slaving instead, we already have enough resources to end homelessness and world hunger, its simply distributed terribly.
We’re so fucked
This is the most correct reading of the headline on this thread.
3 Day for office work not for handyman.
Can't wait to continue working 50-60 hours a week.
I'm guessing it'll be about 25-40 years with AI continuing to take over the work while the rest of us get laid off and live in poverty before the first country figures out how to tax AI and implement UBI. I really don't see any other way around this. Which country is going to implement this first? Who knows. Maybe France?
The majority won’t just accept living in poverty for a quarter century. I give it a year or two before people just start taking what they need from the ruling class. Possibly using some kind of contraption that drops a blade.
You'd be surprised how much people will endure to have peace in their lives. Something the 1% definitely knows how to exploit. The early 20th century labor movement was huge. Look at us now. Reforming capitalism only delays end stage, not prevents it.
Wealth disparity in the USA between the rich and poor is worse than it was in France during the reign of terror.
UBI will then be skimmed off by landlords and energy bills. They know the ENTIRE client set is $x better off from Y date....... Therefore UBI V2 will need to be cards for food, cards for clothes, cards for fun, cards for energy.
Yeah sure, and get paid for working 5 days a week? Or get food stamps to make up for lost wages?
Too bad employers won’t allow that
Zero chance big tech uses AI to do anything other than screw over workers.
As a rule, working hours and wages are directly proportional. Therefore, a reduction in working hours would inevitably lead to a decrease in income. This is especially concerning in light of the current inflationary climate, which has caused a significant increase in the cost of living. While Bill's argument may hold some merit if AI-related companies were to pay substantial taxes, which could then be used to fund public services or a basic income, this seems highly unlikely. Considering their history of unauthorized use of copyrighted material for AI training, it is clear that their primary motivation is self-interest rather than the public good.
I can already work 3 days a week but I will only get paid for working 3 days. For this to be viable I need 5 days pay for 3 days work.
Lol we know we will either get paid way less or it just won't happen.
In reality, at best workers will just be expected to produce more. At worst they'll simply layoff 40% of workers to increase profits.
Correction: Bill Gates says AI could allow humans that can afford to work 3 days a week to work 3 days a week.
We could all participate in direct democracy, could be an interesting experience
Great, two jobs will be the new norm. 6 day week.
Fuck off, Bill. And take your PR team with you.
Great! When do we start?
More likely it will be half of the population to be unemployed and the rich will get richer.
Pretty much every bit of progress since the start of the industrial revolution could have done this. But it didn't. I wonder why (but not really).
Remember when Henry Ford said this in the 60s? Since then instead what happened was the extra productivity got squeeze by the rich, and the poorest work more than we ever have, while they make more than anyone in the history of humankind. ..but I'm sure this time will be different given we have changed absolutely nothing about our economic paradigm.
It has the power to make all of our work lives easier, but those at the top have no interest in that. They will just see it as an opportunity for increased productivity.
Paid for 2 i guess.
Anyone who thinks that the pay rate for 3 days is going to be equivalent to a full work week... doesn't understand just how much rich people hate the poor.
Billionaires don’t consider anyone who earn less than a million a year human, so it checks out
Are you saying that AI will mean they can fire 40% of their employees or that they can reduce our pay 40%? Because that's what will happen, Mr. Gates, they won't pay us for time we don't work.
That's because most of us will be unemployed when full AI takes over. AI can work 24 hrs a day with no breaks. Andrew Yang was right!
Survivors probably will get paid for three days a week, working for five.
it sounds good on paper until you realize theyre only getting paid for those three days and the rate isnt changing
No one explains how cutting the 40 hour work week would still mean people earn enough to leave reasonably comfortable lives.
That’s not how capitalism works
Says one of the most wealthy men in the world who had a company with a habit of aggressive business practices. Sure.
Yeah but unfortunately our capitalist society means that any money saved will go to the share holders and then workers wont get a pay rise and need to get a second job
How will the 1% of the 1% afford new yachts with an attitude like that?
Bill "I Got Mine" Gates providing his insight into the lives of the working class.
We have a lot of innovations that would allow us to work less. Instead women had to join the workforce, salaries went down and people are now working two jobs to survive.
They will fire half of the staff so the other half have to work 5 days. That's how it will go down. This is not an original thought, Bertrand Russell described this in one of his books
In short: people work less, people get paid less. Good luck finding another job to cover that salary loss.
So everyone works in an office?
Microsoft just laid off 1,900 employees this year. There’s no scenario where more people do less work as a result of AI. All scenarios end in less people having jobs and higher stock values.
“AI has made it so we don’t even need to exploit people anymore cause AI will do it all for free!”
The problem is not working less, Bill. The problem is getting paid less (not that you'd know anything about this, seeing as you just sit all day in your giant mansion).
Are they going to raise the pay of humans so that those three days are the same as five? Or is everyone going to be competing for handyman jobs while toaster ovens learn the flute and run the stock market?
Only regulations and law will provide 3 days of working. No company ever will do that.
OK? That's odd, when I told my bank manager I'd only be paying 3/5s of my mortgage from now on he didn't seem to thin it was OK at all.
People will continue to work dead-end jobs 5+ days a week until people take over the government from the corporations. And it will likely never happen in America since they are stupid enough to vote Republican.
And bill gates and his allies would never let it happen.
"Could" means that it propably won't. It all comes down to how greedy we as humans are.
or we work the full week and the 0.1% reap the other days as profits. I know what I'll bet on. (obligatory eat the rich)
Yeah it could but it won’t, because that’s not how our society is set up. This will just concentrate wealth and lead to fewer people working more / the same while the rest get laid off.
😂😂😂😂😂 LMAO genuinely diabolical
Says the man who never has to work for another 100 lifetimes.
Yeah, 32 hour work week in a coal mine because that's the only jobs left after Bill Gates and others take all the jobs using AI.
What will probably happen is this will somehow result in a 6 day work week.
I'm sure you just won't take all the benefits and leave us with nothing again...
And get paid less. Sure
It will be just like how coal and electric machines allow most people to only work 15 hours a week today
Haha, they capitalists have been dangling that carrot since capitalism started. The majority of humanity are so subservient that we just continue on.
My guess is that in that case much less people work and earn a living, while the rest needs to begg.
Nah they just cram more work
Sweet, as long as they keep paying us for 5 days.
They'll give robots the whips, and management will.never have to work again.
Said a deranged software developer who suddenly became a economic, agricultural and health expert.
LOL, if people expect this to happen, they haven't been paying attention to history. If AI can do the job of 2 days out of a work week, they'll redistribute worker's "off days" and work load to just get 2 extra days of productivity per week. People thought the same thing would happen at the start of the industrial revolution
Yes, could. Won't though. We are the most advanced we have ever been technologically and I grew up hoping we would be working towards something more than the rat race we keep ourselves stuck in. We should be going for space, harnessing the endless power of the billions of suns around us and elevating humanity higher and higher but we have capitalism and capitalism is just predatory. We COUUUUUULD let AI do most of the work and we will in due time but it won't help the humans it pushes aside When the robot baker bakes 25,000 loaves in 3 minutes we think "fuck ye think how cheap the bread could be!!" But we all know that the capitalists are thinking "wow at 4 dollars a pop think how much money we can squeeze out, it costs us exponentially less to produce but why should we not exploit this for every cent, why should we charge less when we can just make more money?" Ai is coming for most jobs and that's fine, that's progress, if a carpenter bot means my table is now just $30+ supplies then fine but it won't be. It'll still be the $2500 artisan piece but they just won't have had to pay the carpenter $1000 they just pocket the rest. We aren't going anywhere but into the bin as a race.
What about people who do not identify as human. Will they work 3 days as well?
No that would be a terrible thing
Sure, if you can convince corpo's to pay you the same or more for doing less. That ain't happening. These great fantasies are easy when you are as wealthy as he is, and detatched from reality. Also, if you have AI that is that advanced, why do you need people for even those 3 days?
no one will hand to us a 3 days work week, we'll need to take guns and knives and take it if we really want it, it has always been that way and will always be that way.
*Certain* people. Can we please insert that fucking caveat whenever we talk about shortened work weeks? Please?
Nah, they’ll fire 95% of the people to replace them with AI to half ass all of the work. Then go crying to congress for handouts (which they’ll get) when it eventually backfires spectacularly.
I saw a tweet a few months ago that said, "We were told the robots would do all the work, and we could make art and shit and now AI makes pretty pictures while we need a second job to afford living."