Fewer days of work but fewer professions too: Bill Gates’ prediction about Artificial Intelligence

He founder of Microsoft He is one of the world’s most influential technology visionaries. Bill Gates in an interview conducted in 2023 with the podcast “What now? With Trevor Noah”shared his perspective on how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world of work.

Gates predicted that this accelerated technology will come revolutionize the scope of work, significantly reducing the working day as well as the jobs, forcing, in the future, having to modify roles.

Consider that AI suggests key transformations, improving productivity, concentration, well-being and optimizing results. But, at the same time, it poses great challenges in the job adaptation of future societies to these technological changes.

A world with fewer working hours and professions, according to Bill Gates

Bill Gates compared the potential impact of AI to previous technological milestones. He noted: “I don’t think the impact of AI will be as dramatic as that of the industrial revolution, but it will certainly be as great as the introduction of the PC.”. According to the businessman, this technology promises to transform radical form the way the world works and produces, just as digital tools did in the past.

He highlighted how technological applications, for example word processors, did not eliminate office work, but they did alter it. And this same standard could be applied to AI, which, when automate repetitive taskswill allow new adjustments in the world of work.

One of the key points during his intervention in the interview was the proposal of the possibility that in the future the working hours are reduced significantly thanks to AI-powered automation. “If we eventually reach a society where we only work three days a weekit’s probably fine. The machines will be able to produce all the food and so on,” he considered.

Regarding this, he suggested that technological advance would improve productivitysince it would eliminate the heaviest and most tedious work. And by optimizing time, it would allow workers to focus on more creative, strategic, enriching and managerial tasks, and companies would see improvements in the efficiency of their operations.

Despite his optimistic prediction about AI in the workplace, in another important point, Gates also warned about its impact on certain professions. “Teachers, sales or customer service technicians they can disappear like other professions did before,” he explained. It alludes to how technology, throughout history, has already replaced manual or repetitive jobs.

He stressed the importance of adaptation and learning capacityboth of employers and employees, to these new work dynamics that could be generated. Since instead of these job roles disappearing entirely, many are will transform. For example, workers could take on roles of supervision about what AI does, monitoring and making sure these technologies operate efficiently.