Bill Gates says a 3-day work week where 'machines can make all the food and stuff' isn't a bad idea
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.
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.
I don’t care what one of the richest people in the world thinks about labour and work/life balance. I care what the average person thinks.
But he’s right about this.
You should, because they are the ones who will be making the decisions.
And their decisions equate to: how can we employ the fewest number of people with the least benefits and make the most profit off what we’re selling?
But definitely don’t consider that under- or unemployed people don’t have the money to spend on making those profits happen.
Yeah, every debate about reducing the number of cars always ends at something like "too many jobs are involved in the car industry, so we need to preserve these jobs, and also people need cars to go work in these factories". I feel like there will hardly be a deep environmental breakthrough if it doesn't come with a deep social change.
I would rather work down the road at a bakery than drive to the next town to be an engineering apprentice.
Only one of them pays, however.
"We're too deep in the hole we've dug for ourselves. Just keep digging and hope we eventually come out the other side." That's what that logic effectively equates to: doing the same stupid thing and hoping it eventually works out for you.
Companies would automate and save on employees, making people poor. Automation only makes sense if basic universal income is applied
The “””end goal””” would be people working half the time, earning half the money, and stuff costing half as much to make and half as much to purchase.
The issue is we have to force them to translate the manufacturing cost decrease in a price decrease, or it’s never going to happen.
A reduction in work hours is also a step forward until UBI is instated. If I make the same amount doing 4 or even 3 days of work in a week, while automation does the rest, that works for me. The idea is that people need to work less and make the same if not more. UBI or a reduction in work hours are both good paths forward. UBI being the ultimate goal.
I don't care what he thinks, but I care that he has a platform that others in his class listen to and may respect. It's not a position you hear often from those with a lot of wealth. I'm ok with progress coming from any direction, even if it's self-serving in some form, and I do think it's self-serving.
I remember him saying that computers would make people work less by being more productive, but in the end the difference was pocketed by the rich. I don't think it's just a technology problem...
It has never been a technology problem.
If society was build correct in a democracy, advances in all fields would always be for benefitting the people and the majority.
This has been a problem ever since the industrial revolution and what caused the great depression.
If technology advances to a stage where we only need 75% of the current work force, the answer is not to fire 25%. It is for everyone to benefit and work 25% less or get 25% more pay. (or 12,5% work less and 12,5% more pay. Our choice)
That is a working democracy.
You should get 33% more pay as the full work force productivity would be 4/3 of the original in your example.
This difference might be clearer with an example where only half of the work force is required to match the original productivity. In this case, if the full work force continues to work, productivity is presumably doubled. That's not a 50% increase. It's 200% of the original or a 100% increase. So the trade-off should be between 50% fewer working hours and 100% more pay.
Of course, instead you'll work the same hours for the same pay and some shareholders pocket that 100% difference.
I wrote test automation for Microsoft for years. My team turned a process that took 6 weeks of a hundred people working full time to produce manual test results into one that could complete in an hour on a couple hundred computers in a lab somewhere. It was a massive breakthrough in productivity on our part. Of course, 90% of the team was laid off when the code they'd written could be maintained by a couple of people.
So yeah, the difference "went to the shareholders", certainly not to the people that did the work
It's all about power. The 1% will not give up their power ( = the opportunity to do whatever they want whenever they want) just because it would be good for the 99% to work less.
That's not how the world works.
The 1% will continue to make sure that they are in control of whatever the next thing is that grant them the same or more power.
If owning AI gives them power they will do whatever necessary to own AI and let's not kid ourselves here "they" would be you and me if we had the chance.
It took me way too long to realize that a lot of people think like you do and then project it onto the rest of us.
No. If I’m being honest, I would pass at the chance to have power. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I’d do the right thing with it. I have a small handful of people who have suffered at my hands throughout my life and I have a hard enough time sleeping over that.
To know that I was making the quality of life worse for people who I’d never even know for my own sake would break me. I’d deserve it too.
Unfortunately, the people who I’ve know that exercise power over their fellow man don’t seem to lose a wink of sleep. They justify everything, but they’re miserable and they don’t have any real friends. They’re constantly paranoid that people are out to take something from them because they are. Some people try to reach the pockets above the foot on their back to take what they can from the situation. I can’t relate to them either, but I can at least empathize with them.
It's not a bad idea, but it also can't exist without a complete re-haul of what it means to live in modern society. Right now, replacing workers and cutting hours means people don't have enough money to live. That is not an acceptable result of automation. I'm not qualified enough to have a reasonable solution to this, but I know it needs to be addressed before we get to that point.
Isn't this the primary argument for universal basic income? If you're keeping unnecessary jobs around just to give people something to do, you're not actually keeping them for contributions to society... In the long run ubi could probably even be cheaper than paying to prop up obsolete and wholly unnecessary industries.
While true, UBI would have to be funded by corporate tax.
“We no longer need people to be able to sell and deliver our products”
^ Win for the corporations
“Virtually no (low-income) property is unoccupied now. And my middle class tenants are making more from UBI, so I raised rent”
^ Win for landlords (which are mostly corporations)
“We can now demographically target ads to UBI payouts to get people to spend their money”
^ Win for corporations
It continues, but the general idea is that, while the populace could benefit from UBI, if it just comes from their taxes it’s not going to shrink class division in any way, but increase it
If everyone gets UBI, I assume it is still optional to work. Otherwise no one would produce goods and services that we consume in order to live. Or at least fixing the robots.
I assume the incentive for that is additional income.
Wouldn’t this then create an even larger gap in income inequality? And further dilute the spending power of those who are only able to collect UBI?
Look at this guy who doesn’t have billions he made from the 90s and 2000s to rely on!
In 2010 Bill Gates was worth 50 Billion. He is now worth 117 Billion.
He ain't exactly coasting. He just has a higher PR budget than he did back in the 90s.
The machine doesn't require a salary but instead of sending the money it saves to the workers it replaces it is added to the yearly profits, a three day work week with more automatisation can't happen before that last part is reversed or there's extreme deflation happening to compensate for lower wages.
Some of you [all rich folks] may cry but its a sacrifice I am willing to make
I do wonder if this is even a money thing as even OpenAI has warned investors that money in the future is not certain. Maybe we are going to be forced to look to alternatives other than money as the means of value?
Let's just keep doing what we're doing now
Yeah no shit. The problem is that capitalism hates it.
"Hmmm... Solve world hunger...Why don't we do that?..."
"Sir, your dinner is ready."
"The flies were wild caught yes?"
"From Botswana sir. Just as you like."
Slurp
The Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and Denmark are all capitalist societies and run on <5 day work weeks. Capitalism is not the problem, North American society in particular is what seems to have the problem.
Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and Denmark
Each of which have about 2-4x union participation than USA, for example. Which indicates to me that they're doing a better job of keeping capitalism at bay, not that capitalism is more benevolent in those countries.
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.
Assuming the owners of those machines don't restrict the people's access to that "food and stuff"
You think Bill Gates of all people don't know that? He's just trying to gaslight us into thinking the stupid-rich gigacorporation owners like him are the solution and not the problem.
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
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.
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
Then i have got a bridge to sell you. Its quite necessary you see...
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.
I think it's unavoidable that humans won't have enough work in the future since more and more stuff get automated.
I also think the evil people at the top knows this and are no strangers to starting wars to get rid of millions of people, when there is no capitalistic benefit for them to exist.
Their goal isn't to get rid of people. It's to have more people. That's why abortion band and stuff are pushed. More people in this system means more people trading their lives to give profit to the owners. Unless there's an actual threat of revolution, more people is useful to them.
Yeah but my point is, more people may not mean more profits in the future. Depends on what can be automated.
So basically im saying there are two ways to increase profits, either reduce costs (salaries) or increase sales. It's possible that in the future, the equation becomes that it's possible to reduce costs very very much by reducing employees to almost nothing, but someone needs to buy the products for it to be a profit, I agree.
It just seems so primitive what we are doing now. We should build societies where humans are happy, but capitalism is the opposite, and other systems seem to suck also.
Those star trek societies are only possible because they can generate items from thin air...
And more competitions for resources. Which means the owners of those resources (landlords, corporations) can drive up the prices. Kill off all the poors and then there’s no demand to rent your apartments or buy your shit. No demand drives prices down and therefore profit down.
I wonder what happens when the work is done and all jobs are successfully automated away. It makes very little sense how a stable world could exist where 10 guys own EVERYTHING.
Crap, now all the braindead covid conspiracy theorists are going to roll this into their "15 minite cities are open air prisons" conspiracies
I mean...isn't your pattern recognition starting to ring a little bit?
Walkable cities would be an absolute hellhole, but not for the reasons that conspiracy theorists are claiming. Packing everyone in densely enough to make everything walkable will be a hellhole.
We need affordable options for transportation. Bad weather and the cold also require enclosed vehicles that can't tip over.
We used to have walkability. It was actually better than the car infested hellhole we are it right now.
Walkable cities exist. They're quite nice.
A lot of words to to express "I'm an American who doesn't even have a passport."
Can't even imagine a walkable city, and talking about it like it's a far-off sci-fi concept, rather than a lot of peoples' actual everyday life. Yikes.
The term walkable includes public transportation. It's a multiplier on what locations are considered accessible without owning a car. Common misconception.
Sounds great. Only question is how we get paid well enough to live. A question which went conveniently unasked and unanswered.
We should stop measuring our productivity in hourly and need to go back to salary well paying positions, or everyone needs to share the costs with UBI instead.
machines will make money for us too, everyone gets a magic money machine
As an end goal, with something like UBI and rescaled salaries etc … yes, this obviously true.
The catch is that there’d be a transition period, with uncertainties and states of incomplete capacity either from the AI or the implementation of the rearrangements of salaries etc.
In that phase, there will be opportunities for people or companies to acquire power and wealth over this new future. Who will make and sell the AIs? Who will decide what gets automated and how and with what supervision. That’s where the danger lies. It’s a whole new field of power to grab.
How in the world did Bill Gates go from being a scummy unethical monopolistic figure to now some trusted guru on everything? I need an explanation.
He used the money from the former to launder his image
Remember when he depended on the workforce and labor of others? Then remember when he stepped away from running a company and stopped depending on labor?
That's when he magically turned "for" employee rights and sustainability. Weirdly coincidental, I know.
I applaud and respect Gates for what he stands for now and what his foundation achieves. But he would be the first one to mandate return to office and be against anything that cuts into his bottom line if he was still running a company.
Lots of PR. I just listened to a QAnonAnonymous podcast episode on him and learned that the foundation isn't as charitable as it seems. There are many reports that they come in and try to control the charity/project requesting funds, force these groups to give licensing rights to their technology, and often rely on public funds to get their projects off the ground. They likened it to the old Microsoft days where they come in and absorb companies with hostile takeovers.
Here's what would happen in capitalist America: entities would own those machines and use them as a means of personal enrichment, it'd displace a ton of human workers, the taxes generated from profits generated wouldn't offset the economic impacts, and then half of the lawmakers would introduce bills that would provide lucrative incentives to those entities if they maintain a certain ratio of human workers and they'd staple a bunch of regressive crap onto it like abortion or whatever, it wouldn't pass because the other half of lawmakers would want to tax the hell out of profits made with those machines, government would shut down 4 times a year, Jeff Bezos builds a vacation home on the moon
When someone says technology will make your work easier, they're looking for an excuse to make you work harder.
Or replace you.
Or force everyone to work part time, and drop benefits...
Farmers would disagree
Yes, but farmers also need to know how a CLI works and how to solder microcontrollers in order to get their machines working without forking over their firstborn to John Deere
He's ok with it as long as the machines are all running Windows, and he gets his fair share.
I don't think ol' Billy cares much about Windows anymore, I'll be honest.
Given that he has flirted heavily with Samsung as of recently.
It would be a great idea except it's incompatible with capitalism. It would take away a lot of jobs from less privileged people and society would do nothing to support them. These people could then be exploited even harder due to job scarcity.
Would be nice though if we could have nice things.
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?
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.
it will NEVER happen as long as we live in an oligarchy in which the rich are dependent on the lower classes not only for their labor but they also need us to exist for their feelings of superiority. They need people below them to feel good about themselves, they will NEVER let us escape the wage-slave to profit vacuumer dichotomy.
The easy solutiont o that is getting rid of the oligarchs then.
I disagree, I think it's always just about money. Power hungry-ness comes from the fear of losing your current position, the fear of not advancing and getting left behind. With power they secure the position they have. And it's not just exclusive to the rich. You can see the exact same pattern in a random fucking McDonald's.
If it was more profitable (and possible) to automate 40% of work at any given company (the ratio Gates said in this article), everyone would do it in a heartbeat.
Exactly.
As if we had a 4 day work week already. Maybe start with that?
Right now we seem to operate on a 5-day work week except somehow it only amounts to about 12 hours of actual work.
The amount of bullshit jobs that exist is insane. So many people in offices that either don't do anything or barely anything. Then even more who could easily get all work done in half a work day. Then a gigantic amount that could easily do their work in 4 instead of 5 days or 6 instead of 8 hours. I'm typing this at work because of all the downtime I have and I still believe I get more work done then most of my colleagues.
That is completely field dependent. I worked many years of retail and a bit of construction before eventually becoming a software engineer. In my experience, both retail and construction can easily have 9 hours of work in a 10 hour workday. Now that I'm a software engineer, your comment is more akin to my experience with the amount of actual work getting done, while the rest of the work week is filled with time wasting things, like meetings and such.
Also, sick days and vacations are frowned upon, especially in retail, because these kind of places are always trying to get away with the least amount of staff that they can. It's like the lower paid, 'unskilled'(no such thing), workers work harder and for less benefits than everybody else. They know they can get away with it, because these people are living paycheck to paycheck, and can't afford to protest anyways.
What a stupid ass... yeah we're just gonna magically erase all the inequality that YOU HELPED CREATE because robots can make us sandwiches. Sure. That'll totally work out.
How are we going to get there, Mr Philanthropist?
So some kind of techno quasi-socialism. Sounds great. I wonder who's gonna get in the way of that, Bill?
But are we still paid the same? Otherwise it would be working 2 jobs which one during "weekends". Much worse.
Not if you're a chef.
I'm even ok with the 0-day work week, as long as I get the salary in time.
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
Capitalism and automation cannot coexist. Fallout 76 players know it very well.
What's the plan/roadmap Mr. Gates?
Edit: he solved tuberculosis or something, how about he eliminates an even bigger and more transmissible scourge on society—economic slavery which modern life constitutes
He'll get back to you on that later. The third day of his work week is over.
Releasse ze prototype!
Fuck Bill gates
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.
I love that this headline let's ole Bill sound like a zoned out stoner college freshman.
Such a nice little stoner billionaire /s.
Don’t humanize these assholes. It’s the reason why he says stuff like this. He’s a wealth hoarding bastard that fucked a lot of people over to get where he’s at. If he thought it was a good idea he could easily just start a big trial somewhere. But he doesn’t. Instead he sits on his mountain of money and says cute shit for idiots to drool over instead of taxing him.
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
No one wants to work. They want to feel valued, and be productive. So let's just make it where working isn't a necessity, pls.
I don't want to feel valued or productive, so I don't work
You can get both of those things without working. But if you don't want them, that's fine.
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.
Utopia would be one where humans can focus on art and science to advance our race while the mundane work of running a society is all automated. Stuff like this is not enough, but it seems like a step in the right direction where income remains the same to maintain a standard of living while still producing the same output
"I mean, it's sure been great for me folks!"
Yea sure, and then slowly slowly even stop those who work 3 per days, right? So the AI csn do all the job. Now they lose money, but once they put AI they will only win money.
AI is good, they develop AI to help us, and then, one day will ditch us.
It is easier to have AI optimize the bullshit jobs than the shit jobs.
I wish him to become a monk or someone like that, and disappear forever
Great, that can be his next project after making sure the COVID vaccine was subject to patent law.
He just wants to own the machines and keep all the wealth they create.
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!
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.
Great. Now tell us about your flights on Epstein's plane.
Machines making all the food? I'm out, my pallette deserves better.
Do you only eat food that has been untouched by machines now?
Yeah! I'll take my certified organic farm-to-table heritage tomato that was sorted and packaged by machines in a factory. But at least it was grown by a real farmer... In a batch of millions and harvested by a machine.
What will happen is some people will work more then that at second jobs for more money, and then that will drive down wages for everyone else.
You know what sounds even better? Turning this dude into ground meat
So soft and buttery I bet.
Sure, let the food industry do the processing conveniently in three days. Nobody needs these farmers anyway who work their usual six and a half...
/s
I think the idea would be to have machines replace people wherever possible and then have multiple people split the work time where it isn't. Why does one farmer have to work 24/7 if two could split the work and actually have a life outside of work?
I think ultimately this is going to become the crunch point. Because what kind of jobs can AI eventually take over (with appropriate robotics) in the mid-term future?
- Driving (if all cars were computer controlled today and roads were segregated from pedestrians, it'd probably already be possible)
- Likely end to end delivery could be automated. Large amounts of the process already are
- Train (and bus based on item 1) drivers. Currently, much of the urban transit systems around the world are ATO, where the train controller opens/closes doors and starts the train and is primarily present for safety. The rest is done automatically. There are already fully automated transits, and I suspect it is unions and legitimate safety concerns stopping full automation. But, it could be done with some work I think.
- Software development. I mean, currently the AI prediction in Visual Studio is sometimes scarily good. It DOES need to be guided by someone that can recognise when it gets it wrong. But so often development of a function now is writing 2 lines and auto completing half of the rest of the lines from the "AI". It's really a task of improving LLM and tying in LLM to product specific knowledge. Our days are most certainly numbered I think.
- Software design. This is similar to the above. With a good LLM (or General AI) loaded with good product knowledge, you might only need a few people to maintain/rework requirements into a format they can work with and feed-back mistakes until they get a sensible result. Each time reducing the likelihood that mistake will happen again. We'll need less for sure.
- I think a lot of the more basic functions of a nurse might well become tasks for some form of robotic AI companion for fully trained nurses/doctors. Maybe this is a bit further away
- Airline pilots could probably already be replaced, and it's purely on the safety grounds that I'm glad they're not. Generally once a route is programmed the pilots on a flight that goes well, will drive the plane to the runway, the plane will automatically set thrust for economic take-off. Once established in the air autopilot will pretty much take them to their destination. Pilots can then switch modes, and the autopilot for an equipped airport can take the plane to a safe landing. Although in practice, pilots usually take control back around 500 feet from the ground, I think. It's not really many steps that need automating. I feel like, at least one pilot will be retained for safety reasons. For the reasons for certain high profile incidents, there's an argument to keep 2 forever. But, in terms of could they be replaced? Yes, totally.
- Salespersons. Honestly, the way algorithms trick people into buying things they don't need. I'd argue they've already been replaced and businesses just still employ real sales people because they feel they need to :P
- Cleaners (domestic and street/commercial) could potentially be replaced by robotic versions. At the very least, the number of real people needed could be drastically reduced to supervisors of a robotic team.
- Retail workers. There's already the automated McDonald's isn't there? I also think the fact commercial property in large cities is becoming less occupied is a sign that as a whole, we're moving away from high-street retail and more online or specialist. As such, while we'll always probably need some real people here, the numbers will be much lower.
Now, when it comes to industrial and farm work. There's a LOT that is already semi-automated. One person can do the job with tech that might have taken 10 or more now. I can see this improving and if we ever pull of a more generalised AI approach, more entire roles could be eliminated.
My main point is, we're already at the point where the number of jobs that need people are considerably less than they used to be, this trend will continue. We know we cannot trust the free market and business in general to be ethical about this. So we should expect a large surplus of people with no real chance of gainful employment.
How we deal with that is important. Do we keep capitalism and go with a UBI and allow people to pursue their passions to top that up? Do we have some kind of inverse lottery for the jobs that do need doing? Where people perhaps take a 3 month block of 3 day working weeks to fill some of the positions that are needed? I'm not sure. I suspect we're going to go through at least a short period of "dark age" where the rich get MUCH richer, and everyone else gets screwed over before something is done about the problem.
Looks to me like Gates is looking ahead at this.
Sorry if that wall of text sounds pessimistic. Just one way I can see things going.
Yay! Pay cuts for everyone!