SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Billionaire Jack Ma, long an outspoken advocate for China's extreme work culture, says that people should be able to work just 12 hours a week with the benefits of artificial intelligence.
People could work as little as three days a week, four hours a day with the help of technology advances and a reform in education systems, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder said at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai Thursday. He spoke on-stage with Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. who is building manufacturing facilities in the city.
[...] Just this year, Ma endorsed the China tech sector's infamous 12-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week routine, so common it earned the moniker 996. In one blog post, China's richest man this year dismissed people who expect a typical eight-hour office lifestyle, defying a growing popular backlash.
"I don't worry about jobs," Ma said on Thursday, making an optimistic case that AI will help humans rather than just eliminate their work. "Computers only have chips, men have the heart. It's the heart where the wisdom comes from."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ChrisMaple on Monday October 14 2019, @05:10PM (6 children)
There is so much wrong with economics that the flaws could fill a library. Economics looks at the wrong things, too often uses linear extrapolation, fails to consider the effect of passing time, ad infinitum. Many things just can't be predicted, yet economics pretends it can. Consider LED lights, which are 10 times as efficient as incandescents. The increased efficiency results in increased demand for light, but the efficiency gain is so extreme that the demand for electricity falls. By displacing fluorescent lamps, mercury pollution falls. Long lamp life means fewer car trips to the store to buy replacements. LEDs are a revolution in automotive lighting. LED use in flashlights provides brighter light with longer battery life (hence less pollution from discarded flashlight batteries.) Longer lamp life in industrial settings probably reduces injuries incurred while replacing lamps. The side effects and interactions go on and on, and no economic analysis considers them all, let alone considers them accurately.
LED backlighting (and organic LEDs) is a foundation for digital camera screens and smart phones. By increasing the amount of time spent looking at a screen close to your face, LEDs may be increasing the incidence of myopia, which effects the industries of eye doctors and glasses makers -- or does brighter lighting at home, school, and work reduce the incidence of myopia?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @05:39PM (3 children)
According to this report [eia.gov] consumption of electricity is expected to grow from 4000 TWh (terrawatt hours) to 5500 TWh in thirty years.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday October 14 2019, @11:30PM (2 children)
I tried finding the numbers in the linked document, but was not successful. My question - does this energy increase account for population increase as well (i.e. will the per-capita energy use be higher or lower than today)?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @11:37PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @10:25PM
Did you forget about battery electric car charging? If even half the electric cars that are currently projected are purchased, that should add 30% pretty easily.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @11:42PM
"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." (Laurence J. Peter)
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @05:41AM
Just remember that for most economists, the real world is considered an edge case.