Por Ignacio De Vita
En esta noticia
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said advances in artificial intelligence (AI) could profoundly change the relationship between people and work. In an interview on the podcast “What Now? with Trevor Noah”, he said a society in which people work only three days a week could be viable if machines were able to produce the goods needed.
Gates linked that possibility to rising productivity and the need to rethink how much time people spend on the job.
Bill Gates explained why the workweek could be cut back
During the conversation with Trevor Noah, which took place in November 2023, Gates said work should not be seen as life’s only purpose and sketched out a scenario in which technology could take over a large share of production.
“If you zoom out, the purpose of life is not just to do jobs. So if you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week or something, that’s probably OK if the machines can make all the food and the stuff and we don’t have to work as hard.”
The businessman also said that, even with fewer working hours, demand for labor would still exist for certain activities.
“The demand for labor to do good things is still there if you match the skills to it, and then if you ever get beyond that, then, OK, you have a lot of leisure time and will have to figure out what to do with it.”
Gates’ idea was tied to a future in which technology makes it possible to boost productivity without necessarily keeping the same work schedules.
What Gates said about artificial intelligence and jobs
Gates also acknowledged that new technologies can displace workers. To explain that process, he pointed to the drop in the number of people working in agriculture compared with earlier generations.
In his view, the impact could be manageable if new technologies are adopted gradually and workers are supported in learning new skills.
“So if it proceeds at a reasonable pace, and the government helps those people who have to learn new things, then it’s all good.”
The businessman added that boosting productivity through software could be especially important in the face of population aging.
The debate over AI’s impact on jobs also took on greater importance in 2023, as different companies began adding artificial intelligence tools to their processes. In that context, Gates had defended the technology’s potential to improve productivity, health care and education.
In March of that year, he also called for rules governing the development of artificial intelligence, with the goal of ensuring its benefits outweighed the possible negative effects.