Bill Gates says that technology will make three day weeks possible in near future
Topics: Bill Gates, Technology, Artificial Intelligence
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Thierry Monasse / Contributor/Catherine Falls Commercial
Topics: Bill Gates, Technology, Artificial Intelligence
Forget a four-day working week, Bill Gates can see a future where we only need to head to the office three times a week thanks to the advancements in technology.
While AI can delve into what the 'average person' looks like for each job or what the 'ideal boyfriend' looks like in each US state, its rise is certainly providing some more surprising possibilities.
Of course, AI is a scary prospect to a lot of us, and was one of the reasons behind the recent Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes.
But according to the Microsoft co-founder, it could mean in the future we have four days off work every week.
Advert
Amid many fears that us humans will struggle to compete with AI and technology in the future to the point where we are turfed out of jobs for machines, Gates has a more optimistic future in mind.
The 68-year-old reckons we will see a future where 'machines can make all the food and the stuff, and we don’t have to work as hard'.
Speaking on Trevor Noah's What Now podcast, Gates said: "In the near-term the productivity gain you get from AI is very exciting.
"If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that's probably OK."
The fourth richest man on the planet added: "If you free up human labor, you can help elder people better, have smaller class sizes - you know, the demand for labor to do good things is still there.
"And then if you ever get beyond that, you have a lot of leisure time and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it.
"If you zoom out, the purpose of life is not just to do jobs."
Gates hasn't always been a fan of AI though, and the possibilities it could bring to us in the future.
In fact, just this summer, the tech entrepreneur warned about the dangers of AI.
"I don't think AI's impact will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution, but it certainly will be as big as the introduction of the PC," he penned in a blog.
"Word processing applications didn't do away with office work, but they changed it forever. Employers and employees had to adapt, and they did."
He had stronger words for AI back in 2019.
Speaking about the advancement of AI during a talk at Stanford, he said: "The world hasn’t had that many technologies that are both promising and dangerous.
"We had nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and so far so good."