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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.
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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.
Pretty sure you could just make your own on your days off.
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.
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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
Great, that can be his next project after making sure the COVID vaccine was subject to patent law.
When someone says technology will make your work easier, they’re looking for an excuse to make you work harder.
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
Or replace you.
Or force everyone to work part time, and drop benefits…
But are we still paid the same? Otherwise it would be working 2 jobs which one during “weekends”. Much worse.
“where you only have to work three days a week” seems to imply that you will be paid the same. Or perhaps more logically food would be cheaper. I imagine this will hurt the agriculture sector though, at least in the short term.
But it would double the amount of jobs in other sectors as well.
Lots of industries can’t just stop 4 days a week.
I think a lot of industries that aren’t attractive right now would be more attractive with shorter hours. Which would mean they could hire more people.
Exactly. Would require we invest in educating people properly rather than setting them up for minimum wage jobs because we need them filled.
Some of them could be filled by people right now, such as teachers and nurses who left the field because they felt overworked (and underpaid).
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Not if you’re a chef.
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.
His foundation is a stack of lies. His desire is the same as it always was, control of what should be free.
He strategically bought HUGE amounts of land on top of Aquivers in us and many many other countries…
What he menas here is, HE can provide you with food IF YOU WORK FOR HIM
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.
Money = Infinity Stone
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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
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.
Caveat: I am not a communist. At best, I could be categorized as a “libertarian market socialist”.
Cruelty of “hustle” or “work culture” is an imperative for the parasitic ownership class precisely because it ensures the working classes do not have the free time to collectively bargain.
A 3-day work week is antithetical to keeping the proletariat under the boot heel of wage slavery.
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.
that’s not a problem because I plan on rising to power soon and will not let that happen
Woah there LeroyJenkins, we don’t need you rushing in too soon now
We need to have a plan in place first
I disagree, I vote for Leroy Jenkins to have all the power! All hail our new randomly selected overlord! 😁
oh my God he just ran in…
God dammit leroy
Nah, Bill said where the machines make the food. So, we’re good. Least we got chicken.
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.
Honestly 10 to 1 is a low estimate. It’s an absurd number like 100 or even 200 to 1 from what it once was with the right equipment.
I think it varies by industry/job position. It was a number out of thin air though, I’ll admit.
We know we cannot trust the free market and business in general to be ethical about this.
Disagree to that.
I say, you can trust the markets and businesses to always act as unethical as possible. And with ‘possible’ I mean a lot worse than legally possible.
I don’t really see organisations as unethical. They usually don’t act ethically, but that’s not because as a whole they’re unethical.
I see them more like insects. They generally react to stimuli and just do the same as the other insects/organisations, things that have been proven to work. They’re also generally driven by one basic instinct, to make more money, and they do it at any cost. The drones (employees) are entirely disposable in this endeavour and if they can entirely remove them from the equation they will do it in a heartbeat.
Even those that perhaps do have some form of ethical streak and don’t think they should dump all their employees for AI/robots? Well, good for them, but they’ll be driven out of business by those that do.
When you think of a business or other organisation in this way, a lot of the weird things they do start to make a lot of sense.
make more money, and they do it at any cost.
That doesn’t seem unethical to you??
‘At any cost’ usually means: by forgetting all kinds of laws and all kinds of ethics as well.
Fuck Bill gates
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.
