While some of us might struggle to get our work done due to endless distractions on social media, one tech billionaire predicts that won’t be a problem in the future – because 9-5 jobs will disappear altogether.
With the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and a boom in the gig economy thanks to the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and JustEat, the landscape for workers has already changed markedly in the last decade.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman – who has been known to make a number of prescient predictions in the past – believes the rise of the gig economy will see a reduction in the number of traditional employees.
Hoffman, who sold the business networking site to Microsoft for $26.2bn (£21.4bn) in 2016, was an early investor in Airbnb and previously called the AI revolution years before ChatGPT and others brought it to the mainstream.
In an interview which recently resurfaced on X, the Californian entrepreneur said: “You may not only work at multiple companies during your career, you may work at multiple industries. Industries are changing, your own path changes… you may not actually do a lot of your work fully as an employee, you may actually be working in the gig economy, or you may have two or three gigs.
“All of these things are the directional changes from what we’ve seen in the workforce for the last few decades.
“It actually does create a lot of opportunity, it does create a lot of productivity, but it also creates a lot of uncertainty and people like stability. So one of our challenges as we figure it out is how do we minimise a little bit of the uncertainty, increase a little bit of the stability, while continuing to have the kind of opportunity, productivity and flexibility.”
And while some might worry that this will lead to fewer jobs and an erosion of workers’ rights, Hoffman, 57, has another take on things.
Speaking to CNBC’s Fast Money show, Hoffman said: “All the way to being a radiologist, or lawyer, or coder, all of those things will have an AI personal assistant for doing it and that will change things; change industries and everything else. The good news is that AI can be part of the solution.
“Truck drivers – of which we have a shortage right now – maybe that will eventually all be autonomous vehicles and you say: well what happens to the truck drivers? Well, we create AI assistants that help those people.
“Let’s say, what else is possible for you? How do you learn that job? How do you get that job? How do you do that job? And the thing that we should be wanting as a society is the AI to help everybody in whatever they’re doing.”
Hoffman, who sits on Microsoft’s board, also boldly suggested AI could – in a roundabout way – encourage people to have more children.
In a revealing interview on the Conversations With Tyler podcast, he said: “Among other things, we might say, ‘Look, actually, being a parent is a paid job.’ Just because we think that that’s an important thing as a society, and we can afford that from the productivity increases we’re getting from AI and robotics.
“I think we could get to a place where it would be popular. Right now, it’d be considered science fiction and strange. But if our replacement rate keeps going down, then I think people will say, ‘Oh, no, that makes sense.'”
