Jack Ma: In the next 30 years, people will only work 4 hours a day

Alibaba's boss believes that in the future, people will work less and less, thanks to the emergence of machines.

On the sidelines of Alibaba's Gateway '17 conference in Detroit yesterday, Jack Ma predicted that with automation, in the next three decades, humans will only work four hours a day and maybe four days a week. "My grandfather worked 16 hours a day in the fields and thought he was very busy. We work eight hours a day, five days a week and think we are very busy."

This is also what the famous economist - John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930. He said that in the next 100 years, the working week will be much shorter, about 15 hours per week, because machines will replace human work.

Jack Ma at Gateway '17 conference. Photo: Alizila

Also at the conference, Jack Ma said that artificial intelligence could spark World War III. "The first technological revolution led to World War I. The second revolution caused World War II. And now the third revolution," he said.

However, humans will win over artificial intelligence. Because machines will never have the same intelligence and experience as humans.

"Intelligence comes from the heart. Machine intelligence comes from the brain. You can make a machine learn new knowledge. However, it is very difficult to have a heart like a human," he said.

The goal of AI is to make machines do things humans can’t do, rather than make them human-like, Ma said. So even if “machines are very powerful, humans will still surpass AI.”

*How did Jack Ma build Alibaba?

According to VNE