If you worry that technology sooner or later will overtake humans, maybe it is time to look at the situation from another angle. When inevitably, AI and robots will transform the workforce landscape, it won’t necessarily mean that humans won’t still play a key role. Or at least this is what Alibaba’s Jack Ma thinks.
In his keynote speech at Alibaba Cloud’s Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Ma said that there is one simple reason that will make it impossible for the computers to take over us – the fact that humans possess wisdom.
“People are getting more worried about the future, about technology replacing humans, eliminating jobs and widening the gap between the rich and the poor,” said Jack Ma. “But I think these are empty worries”
Then he added: “Technology exists for people. We worry about technology because we lack confidence in ourselves and imagination for the future.”
Jack Ma also talked about the way humans work will change in the future, stating that he believes the work days will be much shorter (3 to 4 hours a day) and there will be only three work days a week. But according to him, this does not necessarily mean that our lives will be easier: “When that happens, you’ll be even busier than you are today.”
All these talk about the future, however, are just assumptions. Ma also was very convincing that the future is absolutely unpredictable. “Anything that can be clearly defined is not the future. When faced with the future, we’re all kids; no one’s an expert,” he said.
