Bill Gates says a 3-day work week where ‘machines can make all the food and stuff’ isn’t a bad idea::“A society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK,” Bill Gates said.
We will absolutely have automation but the workers will just be fired and all profits will be absorbed by the stockholder.
No cost savings will be passed on the other consumer either.
The problem is that would be wildly unstable. The capitalist class can’t sell automated-produced goods if people don’t have any money because they’re unemployed.
However, those mass layoffs will make this quarter’s numbers go up, and everything else is a problem for next quarter, which is why they’ll do it.
They’ll milk it until society crumbles putting Bandaids® on problems until revolution.
Once AI and robots can do/make anything they want on demand, they won’t even need money, so don’t need to make money by selling stuff. For sure, they will probably have a tough time transitioning from the idea of making money, but they won’t need to any more. The rest of us could split off our own fairer economy, but they’ll probably have the IP locked up on all the technology so we can’t use it and have to keep working 5 day or more weeks.
We’re already at the point where don’t have to work 4 days a week tho.
Sometimes I wonder what they would do if you could make endless perfect copies of objects like you can mp3s.
Dududdo you wouldn’t copy a car. You wouldn’t copy a cheeseburger Copying is a crime.
Like remember it’s only been recently that it became possible to make endless copies of media at effectively no cost.
Can I introduce you to Star Trek?
In The Orville (Seth MacFarlane Star Trek-like show) they actually have a brief discussion about how if that technology was plonked into a world like we have today, it would not be used to make life better for everyone. It would be capitalised on.
Imagine if you could create food at no cost. You think everyone is getting fed, or do you think one company is going to have massive profit margins selling food that it costs nothing to produce?
I don’t remember that bit but I think I only watched the first season of the Orville and that was years ago.
But yeah really depends on how difficult the equipment itself is to replicate.
If it’s some massive machine the size of a room it’s going to make some company extremely rich, they’d sell product for slightly less than normal market value taking over the market with perfectly consistent product and insane margins allowing legal capture.
Why feed everyone when you can almost literally print money?
If it’s something small that can be easily transported and duplicated? Piracy. Nobody will give AF about patents and everyone will have them within a couple years no matter what laws they try to implement or how they try and prevent it.
This has actually already happened with media and this is exactly how it has played out and a lot of people still seem to be in denial.
They can complain and sick lawyers on as many people as they want but they can still make a million copies of something that cost 400 million to make for less than than the cost of a gumball.
The law surrounding it is completely broken and it’s crazy that so many industries are trying to continue on like nothing has changed.
I think it was a 30 second part of the last episode in season 3, I watched it (for the first time) recently so remember it.
I guess it depends who develops it. If Apple invent it then you can be sure they aren’t selling them to anyone else, it will just be secretly used to print iPhones and no one else will have access to one, so no piracy of iPhones.
If a third party company invents it then starts trying to sell them to other companies, then maybe that outcome will be better.
If it’s room sized and sold to other companies it will rapidly be in multiple countries.
There wouldn’t be any way to keep it to one company with it being public knowledge.
Like realistically I’d think any country would ignore whatever laws on the books and just outright sieze the tech as a matter of national security and duplicate it for their own use if they found out a company was hiding such a thing.
From there it’d again leak to all other major countries in short order.
If it’s small and easy to duplicate, (can it replicate itself?) It would spread like wildfire and would like piracy be completely uncontainable.
I don’t think there is anyway the tech could be either contained or kept secret any real length of time.
Hmm you make a good point. I was assuming Apple would just claim a sort of trade secret, I hadn’t thought that governments may seize it.
The other thing is that technology doesn’t really go nothing->machine that replicates anything
Most likely it will start with a machine that can 3d print edible apples from shelf stable source material or something like that. Then someone improves it to be able to do any fruit from the same source material. Then someone improves it so if you feed in a range of different source materials (say, a bunch of metals, glass, and plastic) you can print usable electronics or something. Then someone improves it so it can do the same thing but with one mix of materials instead of separate ones. And so one and so one until you can make almost anything.
At the print 3d apples stage, it will probably get sold to the army for supply rations. Then the maker will look for other places to sell it, then when technology advances people will get updated versions. There probably wouldn’t be a benefit to a company hiding it because at any point the difference from the publically available one is not that big.
If you look back at any major invention, lightbulb, radio, etc. You find that in fact these things predated their supposed invention, there was just some small change that made it commercially viable from the previous version.
I’ve always envisioned this type of utopia to be robot based, with a few machines thrown in for sure. I’ve thought if you can robots plant, grow and harvest the raw food. Then have autonomous trucks drive that food to processing plants that then have robots and machines processing it. You then again have autonomous trucks drive it to the grocery “store” that then have robots placing the product you could in theory make all food free*. (add a billion asterisks to that last statement) Making the food free would probably require the entire economy to migrate to robot workers as much as possible or at least have it be where the robots make other robots so at least they are low cost/free to make. It’ll never happen, we’re totally destined for a Cyberpunk future instead of Star Trek future, but it’s at least fun to think about.
They would figure it out some way to enforce artificial scarcity. Can’t have poor people getting free stuff without being worthy.
We do if we want to pay the rent.
From the employee perspective yes, we have to work 4 days a week, but from the employer perspective, there’s no need to work 4 days a week. In fact, it’s even less productive than working 5 days a week.
When I was a child I envisioned fully automated luxury communism driven by robots and AI.
Realizing that wouldn’t happen for the dumbest possible reasons as a teen/young adult was immeasurably disappointing
Fuck Bill gates
Great. Now tell us about your flights on Epstein’s plane.
I wish him to become a monk or someone like that, and disappear forever
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Noah asked about the threat of artificial intelligence to jobs, Gates said there could one day be a time when humans “don’t have to work so hard.”
While artificial intelligence could bring about some positive change, Gates has previously acknowledged the risks of AI if it’s misused.
Word processing applications didn’t do away with office work, but they changed it forever," Gates said at the time.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that the next generation of workers will only have a 3.5-day work week due to AI.
“Your children will live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology and they’ll probably be working three and a half days a week,” Dimon told Bloomberg in October.
Gates once viewed sleep as lazy and told Noah that his life was all about Microsoft from the ages 18 to 40 years old.
The original article contains 335 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Yay! Pay cuts for everyone!
A 3-day work week would give rise to doing 2 non-concurrent jobs, or a six day work week.
I mean, I could see the benefits - don’t like one of your jobs? Quit one, it isn’t loosing your whole paycheck. Of course, there are weird structural problems like getting scheduled for those 3 days and random times throughout the week making it really a 7-day job with only 3-days of work, and the whole “you can only work 19.95 hrs and if you work more, then we are required to give you health insurance, so you can’t work more than that.”
What? How broken are we all that you first thought is “Nice then I can work two jobs” The only way this really works if they pay living wages for 3 day work weeks. And I know they aren’t even paying those now for 5-6 days but this is a point we have to insist on and make them do it. Workers have managed to enforce a 8 hour work day a long time ago. We need to remember our strength and fight for better conditions.
We are very broken. Rather than improving, the working conditions of most people are declining, and pay isn’t keeping up with living costs.
I believe at some point people won’t take it, but right now I wouldn’t be surprised if people took two job rather than enjoy their free time. Many already do, because they need to.
and pay isn’t keeping up with living costs
this is more about an US problem, 10 years without salary adjusts,a and the shit house market, to be fair the house marked is a problem in other countries, like canada, but not the pay check, i’m not trying to start a fight or just saying USA bad, just showing that needing two jobs to live isn’t the norm, and you’ll as a USA citizens need to see that and starting demanding for better pay, and fix the issues of your countries, if other less rich countries can do that why USA can’t, please be safe
That’s a long sentence
I’m not american. This is not an US-only problem, this is a problem of our wider economic system and corporate influence. Even countries that used to have better conditions are increasingly pressured to exploit their people in the same way.
You know what sounds even better? Turning this dude into ground meat
So soft and buttery I bet.
He just wants to own the machines and keep all the wealth they create.
That’s The Jetsons, Bill. You’re describing the setting of The Jetsons.
I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed to that kind of lifestyle, so long as you don’t ascribe to the fan theory that the Flintstones takes place on the ground below the towers
Assuming the owners of those machines don’t restrict the people’s access to that “food and stuff”
People who sell things that are in high demand and necessary for survival generally are not in the practice of denying people access to those things.
denying people access to those things.
The only way I can reconcile your statement is if you finish it with “if they can afford it”. Which also makes your statement meaningless. No one was ever arguing that business denies products/services to those who can pay for them.
Health care, food, and shelter are all in high demand, necessary for survival, and if you can’t afford it, you are denied it.
No one was ever arguing that business denies products/services to those who can pay for them.
“If they can afford it” suggests otherwise.
Yes, things do indeed cost money and always will until we discover replicator tech.
Um healthcare?
Health care providers are not in the habit of denying care. Health insurers are because they have a perverse incentives to do so - this is why they should not exist
Exactly the people who sell the thing in high demand the issurers are in the business of denying care to people by raising prices on healthcare. I feel like your mind is in the right place I agree insurance companies shouldn’t exist but what you said in your first comment is false large companies who sell high demand products absolutely gouge on prices all of the time.
That’s literally not true though. They compete with each other over offering the lowest price.
That’s funny. In reality they compete on increasing shareholder profits by colluding on prices and paying their employees as little as possible. And to be crystal clear “they” are the CEOS/boards of most major companies.
This is not at all how businesses operate lol
In what world? Outside of government exchanges, you’re limited to the plan your employer offers you.
We were discussing large corps that aren’t insurance companies
Then i have got a bridge to sell you. Its quite necessary you see…
Also, What mind bending drugs are you on? Healthcare is riddled with examples of denied insurance claims for treatments.
if you won’t deny a thing to someone it’s pretty hard to sell it to anyone
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I don’t know about that. Young ruthless Bill Gates was another person, older and wiser Bill Gates has already achieved richest person in the world, Forbes #1, etc etc - all that’s in the rearview mirror - I believe he has awakened and realized it takes a village and he wants his legacy to reflect that
Just goes to show how you can change your public image with shit loads of money. He just laundered his image real good and you just ate it up.
He has not “awakened” to anything. He’s just very good at selling his BS. What’s even worse is that now if you bring up his shitty ways, you are associated with the anti vax idiots.
What’s more likely, a complete reversal of his world view, or a good PR team and some coaching. I’m not buying the first, especially considering that his Jeffrey Epstein association came after he left MS and started running his charitable foundation.
Bill Gates hasn’t really changed dude. He’s just developed a thicker veneer. He’s the largest landowner in the US now, because he’s been buying up as much arable land as possible. He can say its BAU all he wants, it’s incredibly sketchy af. Now in conjunction with this statement, its easy to see where once he cornered the software market, you could infer he’s aspiring to do the same with food with full automation.
Michael Burry (guy from the big short) has been doing the same. We all know climate change is going to fuck us, we all know we are headed towards serious water shortages, etc - these guys also know and have money to position themselves - for what final gameplan I don’t know, but at least with Gates his recent history has shown a care for the greater good for humanity at least. Can’t say the same for other billionaires.
I know Bills history pretty well, I just see a difference between him now and how he was a ruthless businessman in his prior life. Maybe he has me fooled, but I don’t really see it other than people’s conspiracy theory stuff. Guys like Elon are another story though
Why 3, we could do 0
Sure. Give the wealthy and powerful ownership over literally everything in the world and as long as you follow the rules you can get your survival allowance. Shit maybe even some entertainment if you’re really good.
Dumbest fucking take I have ever heard.
Working 0 days doesn’t imply we can’t collectively own things. 20% of Norway’s population democratically own their houses (housing coops) and like 90% of the Finnish population are member/democratic owners of consumer coops (Walmart grocery stores). Neither of these are workers of the respective coops they’re members of.
The overlap between the kind of people wanting to do 0 work and the kind of people willing to actually physically fight for it is virtually nonexistent.
Who is going to enforce communal ownership of the means of production and all products in the economy when those in charge decide they should reap the benefits of managing that? It certainly isn’t going to be the lazy asses who don’t even want to work literally one day a week.
But that’s how things are now… We work 5–7 days a week for the wealthy and powerful to have more ownership, while getting a survival allowance in exchange.
Maybe have a skill worth something then? Wild concept.
If we’re going to be basing pay on “skills” that are “worth something,” CEOs should be getting minimum wage.
So your “solution” to oligarchs owning everything is…sell ourselves to them?
The parent comment was about the current system, where labor produces everything. If your labor can be easily replaced, your labor isn’t that valuable and you won’t be compensated well for your labor. If your labor can’t be replaced easily, it is valuable and you will be compensated well.
That’s pretty much the opposite of this fictional future dystopia where there is no labor at all and everything is produced by automation. In that world, you as an individual have no value at all. You’re just a leech. There won’t be any innovation, because that’s driven by labor which doesn’t exist in this scenario.
If we don’t maintain the institution of slavery, how will we have any innovation?!
0 forced labor doesn’t mean that humans stop doing things. We are a species which psychologically have a need for something meaningful to do, it’s just that our personal resources are spent after all the meaningless stuff we have to do for the ones in power.
A skill worth to them?
Uh yeah. Like literally all of human history, from the beginning of civilization and will likely last until our extinction.
Source?
If machine’s make everything how can we have work for everyone? Even for 3days a year
I think the point is to look past the idea of having to work just for the sake of an income.
I believe the saying is that machines makes most of the manufacturing, simple and mundane services. Humans could then focus on research and development (improving machines), improving our living standard, medicine psychology and so on. And have time to do what you like.
If you listen to sam altman the agi, amachine that improves itself and can do research is 5yr away. Probs marketing talk.
