Jack Ma: In 30 Years People Will Work Four Hours a Day and Maybe Four Days a Week (cnbc.com)

There could be benefits from artificial intelligence, self-made billionaire, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma said, as people are freed to work less and travel more. From a report: "I think in the next 30 years, people only work four hours a day and maybe four days a week," Ma said. "My grandfather worked 16 hours a day in the farmland and [thought he was] very busy. We work eight hours, five days a week and think we are very busy." He added that if people today are able to visit 30 places, in three decades it will be 300 places. Still, Ma said the rich and poor -- the workers and the bosses -- will be increasingly defined by data and automation unless governments show more willingness to make "hard choices." "The first technology revolution caused World War I," he said, "The second technology revolution caused World War II. This is the third technology revolution."

Comments

Re:This has been predicted forever

[bluefoxlucid]

Do you know when the 40-hour work week began? Railroad workers finally got it in 1916; it became a general part of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1937. Most people were working 10-16 hour days.

Re:I thought robots were supposed to do everything

[torkus]

You read too many jilted newspapers and fail to understand market dynamics.

Oil is cheap now because of an oversupply.

Discover of new oil sources isn't driving the over-supply. Instead, it's new technology (and the previously much higher value of oil) driving the exploitation of existing, known fields that were previously not economical to tap.

It's also removal of some restrictions on new wells, fracking, and other techniques.

Combine that with a newfound US refusal to depend so heavily on oil from OPEC has led to a price war in essence. OPEC upped their production to force over-supply and a reduction in prices which was intended to drive the North American producers (which typically have significantly higher production expenses per barrel) out of business. Unfortunately for them, many of those producers already invested the large capital and instead dug in their heels and worked to be more cost efficient. They generally succeeded. Now even as OPEC reduces output to try and bring the prices back up, they're on the losing side of the game after having been used to virtually limitless income in the prior years.

Even with that in mind, the move to renewables is well underway. If people would get un-stupid, we'd combine that with nuclear and call it a day for powering the grid and work to replace our ICE vehicles more rapidly with EVs.