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China AI Technology

Jack Ma, Once Proponent of 12-Hour Workdays, Now Foresees 12-Hour Workweeks (washingtonpost.com) 129

Posted by msmash from the intense-discussions dept.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba founder Jack Ma discussed Mars and artificial intelligence in their first joint appearance on Thursday. From a report: The duo chatted for over half an hour about their vision of how technology, especially artificial intelligence, will shape the future. "I'm always amazed by your vision of technology, I'm not a tech guy," Ma said in his first remarks to Musk, before going on to talk about how artificial intelligence was not a threat. Ma described himself as "optimistic" about AI's impact on humanity, adding that people who worry too much about it have what he calls "college smartness." "People like us that are street smart, we're not scared of that." They also went on to talk about space travel, with Ma complimenting Musk on his attempts to journey into Mars via SpaceX while Musk noted China's advancements in that area, as well as how "inadequate" humans were against computers. Ma, known for arguing in favor of a 12-hour workday, also said he sees a future in which people will have to work only 12 hours a week. He said technological advancements would enable people to live longer and work far fewer hours. He added: "Every technology revolution, people start to worry. In the last 200 years, we have worried [that] new technology is going to take away all the jobs," he said. Ma has previously courted controversy with his endorsement of the "996" work practices prevalent in China's tech industry, under which employees are expected to work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
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Jack Ma, Once Proponent of 12-Hour Workdays, Now Foresees 12-Hour Workweeks More

Jack Ma, Once Proponent of 12-Hour Workdays, Now Foresees 12-Hour Workweeks

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  • The work mentality, USA vs China (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:36PM (#59138816)

    If you have Netflix, watch American Factory [wikipedia.org].

  • Here's what guys like Ma always forget: there's a large subset of the population that will gleefully work long hours because they WANT to. Whether that's because they think that's the only way to get ahead in their chosen career, or because they are addicted to work, or because they don't want to spend time at home, or even because their society demands it even when it is not necessary (Like in Japan, where people regularly stay late and don't want to be seen leaving before the boss does even when there's

    • that 8 hours a week in an old school "job" is plenty to give people the feeling that they're doing useful work.

      People are way more capable of amusing themselves than you give them credit for.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        People are way more capable of amusing themselves than you give them credit for.

        Probably not. The largest actual problem with an UBI is what the people that chose to stop working would do with their time. (Financing it is entirely doable, do not listen to the propaganda from the work-"ethics" virtue signalers.) It is expected that most people will be smart and try to continue to work, if maybe a bit less but essentially with the same productivity per elapsed time. But around 10-20% or so would actually stop working, and they could become a huge problem, with mental illnesses, self-negl

        • The problem being? You already have that problem, these people can hardly hold down a job anyway, so what would change?

          Forcing them into meaningless, mind-destroying occupations (I refuse to even call these time wasters jobs) isn't exactly improving anything.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            The problem being? You already have that problem, these people can hardly hold down a job anyway, so what would change?

            That is _not_ the people that will get hit.

            • Then who is?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by gweihir ( 88907 )

                There is no single, simple answer. You need to do your own reading. It is not a problem of people with very low qualifications though.

                But here is an example: Client advisers in banks are certainly not people that can "barely hold down a job". But there are intense efforts to make them redundant and massively reduce their numbers and these efforts will eventually succeed. The next group to suffer from massive, permanent job-loss that will not be compensated by new jobs is the middle-class.

      • that 8 hours a week in an old school "job" is plenty to give people the feeling that they're doing useful work.

        Nonsense. No "study" has ever shown that. There is no plausible way to fund and conduct such a study, and then interpret the results to reach that conclusion. A statistically significant test would cost many millions to run, and no one would be willing to fund it just to measure "feelings".

        Feel free to prove me wrong by providing a citation.

      • With the words of a German comedian, I need money, not an occupation. I can keep myself occupied all right.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      "large subset of the population that will gleefully work long hours"

      NO. A very small subset would gladly work those insane hours for a company they don't own.
      Very Small.

      Offer 12 hour work week for the same pay and benefits, and over 95% of people will take it. Because we got better thing to do them make someone another billion.

      • Offer 12 hour work week for the same pay and benefits, and over 95% of people will take it.

        Offer a 12 hour workweek with the same pay and benefits, and 95% of people will take it. But 80%-90% will find another job to fill in the rest of the 168 hours in the week. Resulting in their productivity being 2x-4x greater than the guy working just 12 hours and spending the rest of the week playing. Resulting in them being paid 2x-4x as much, allowing them to buy 2x-4x as much stuff. At which point the guy work

        • 12 hours for the same pay? Taken. I even sign you any paper you want that says I won't work a single hour for anyone else.

          I have plenty of stuff to do to take up the rest of my time. So much to learn, so much to do.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          The IRS tax stats [irs.gov] are available for everyone to see. Even if you confiscated all the money made by the 1% (everyone making roughly $500k or more a year) and distributed it to the 99%, it would only amount to an average increase in annual salary of $13k.

          That's $1000 / month, more than enough to fund UBI. Even half that would be enough for basic living.

          And you would be able to get that money via normal taxation, except these people can use various tax loopholes to avoid paying. They don't have much in the way of taxable income, so none of them are paying the 37% highest tax bracket.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. That is also why an UBI would not break society at all. For many people, work is a very large source of meaning in their lives.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        For UBI not destroying society, all we have to do is look at the people who are already on the private equivalent. Many people already live off return on investments or simply by owning things that other people rent, but they generally keep working, often doing stuff that doesn't even pay.

        • NPR had a whole episode a few years ago about long term disability on social security becoming exactly this by the millions. In many places, people with mild issues get disability because, to put it bluntly, they are manual laborers and there are no more jobs for them and few desk jobs they aren't suited for.

          What started as a government program to help sob stories of your fellow Americans way, wayyyyyy down on their luck has morphed into something else.

    • Any other kind of addiction of compulsion would get treatment, from alcohol to gaming, but this is applauded and lauded.

      Tells you something about our society...

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:53PM (#59138870)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The type of work is very different too. Working on the shop floor for 12 hours a day is very different to having meetings at fancy restaurants and playing mini golf in your air conditioned office for 12 hours a day.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Executives should work those long work hours like us!

  • At what point is Ma willing to pay every employee for 40 hours to work 12? That's a pretty critical thing that has to happen in order to achieve the objective. Does the article indicate which companies are going to do this or how this will happen?

    • For most things, the problem is not the prices but the profit margins. If we could somehow drop the profit margins on necessities without lowering the quality, the cost of living would drop and only luxuries would be expensive.

      • For most things, the problem is not the prices but the profit margins. If we could somehow drop the profit margins on necessities without lowering the quality, the cost of living would drop and only luxuries would be expensive.

        The best way to do this would be to automate everything and fire all workers. Then you could skip the paying anyone anything except perhaps the few other people on the planet at the top of the automated production chain and some very exclusive servants. You wouldn't even really need money anyhow when you can make all the fancy mega yachts, cars, multiple palaces, etc directly. Automated militaries would solve any uprising problems as a great bonus. Passing savings onto the filthy masses is against eve

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Well, with sufficient automation, you don't actually _need_ the working poor anymore. Not as labor, not as a market.

          • Without a market, what do you sell your products on? How do you justify your job if there is nobody to sell to?

            The main reason our economy is in the slump is that there is not enough purchasing power in the general population to drive our economy forward. We're a service oriented economy. Almost three fourths of our industries are in services. Services are great, because you're selling basically raw work force. As long as there is people able and willing to work, you can sell. If, and only if, there is some

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 )

      If the bottom 90% had simply gotten their equal share of productivity increases since 1978, they'd only have to work rougly 20 hours to maintain their current standards of living.

      But it was more important to increase the compensation of CEO's from 52x the average worker to 353x (after peaking at about 500x) that of the average worker.

      You know... people have to have money to buy products.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Sorta a variation of the tragedy of the commons, each industry or company hopes that they can cut pay while others stay high, so that there are customers for their goods but their cost of labor is low..... as long as only a small percentage of the market is disrupted at any given time the race to the bottom is slow enough to absorb.. but if too large a segment does it all at once, you get a crash.

    • It's happened already. Productivity increases; we just take the gains as more buying power instead of fewer working hours.

      • Wages have not gone up since the 70's. Adjusting for inflation, most things are more expensive since the 70's. Sure you couldn't get a laptop for $600 in the 70's but that is due to technology advancements, not due to any radical change in how people are paid or their buying power.

        • Sure you couldn't get a laptop for $600 in the 70's but that is due to technology advancements, not due to any radical change in how people are paid or their buying power.

          Inflation is not productivity. The per-capita income has increased, and that measures buying power. If you set the minimum wage to the same percent of the per-capita income as it was in 1960, it would be $42,000/year of today's dollars; the median income would be $95,000 of today's buying power. Our minimum wage policy has encouraged labor force expansion faster than productivity, essentially dividing up our wealth among more people. The median income has grown faster than the minimum wage (2.25x at a

      • Here are average house prices adjusted for inflation since 1940, clearly buying power is not increasing: 1940: $30,600 1950: $44,600 1960: $58,600 1970: $65,600 1980: $93,400 1990: $101,100 2000: $119,600

        • Housing is a red herring. It's a speculative market, not a productive market. Most houses are already-built and cost roughly nothing to transfer: somebody is selling you an antique to which they apply an imaginary value.

          The housing market is also artificially scarce. Builders are targeting upper-middle-class, building nice houses instead of low-cost houses. Labor prices have increased; however, so have simple margins. Builders essentially are marking up houses in line with the speculative market.

          I

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

            Housing is a huge part of cost of living though, so you cannot have a discussion about purchasing power without including it. It doesn't matter if median wage increased if all of the increase, plus some more, are going into rent.

  • Promise a paradise after you die (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:57PM (#59138884)
    Looks like Jack Ma has adopted one standard propaganda scheme of religions: Promise the believers some sort of paradise in some distant future, preferably after they die. Great to make them slave away while they are still alive and add to your riches!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Empiric ( 675968 )

      Who's "slaving away"?

      I think you should review the history of how many were actually "slaving away" in Imperial Rome before Christianity came along.

      There's an inverse relationship between religion and totalitarian citizen slavery. That's why every totalitarian regime represses it--the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, take your pick.

      Such naivete.

  • Ma is a perfect example of someone who was either in the right place at the right time or gave the right person a handy-j just they way they liked when it counted. He isn't a visionary or an Oracle, he hasn't got some grand plan, he is just very rich.

    The opportunity reality is even in our society sometime something other cream rises to the top. In China that is probably far more frequent. While our system does a pretty good job there are cases where people get where they are by simple accident of birth or j

  • he sees a future in which people will have to work only 12 hours a week. He said technological advancements would enable people to live longer and work far fewer hours.

    The exact same thing was said 50 years ago. In fact, some of the hippies who went from LSD to thinking about the world in earnest imagined that future and wrote books about how society would change, etc.

    So I see they're still dangling that carrot in front of everyone, and as before with the added sentence "just not yet".

    Message me when some CEO continues with "and that's why we are moving to a 4 day week / a 6 hour day effective immediately, with full pay".

  • at minimum wage... How is anyone gonna live on that?

    Don't tell me they'll pay for 12 hours what they pay for 40 or 60. The only reason to reduce working hours is cut costs, AI or not.

    We're going feudal! #MAGA!

  • There's one simple reason a 12 hours work week will never happen.

    Imagine you are told that you can support your family with the income you make from 12 hour work week. Wouldn't you work longer for more money? Maybe live in a better house or take better vacations or retire earlier, or all three?

    And for the company, wouldn't it be cheaper to have one person work 24 hours a week than two people working 12 hours a week?

    People that want to work don't really want to work. They want more than what the governmen

  • Additionally, Jack Ma is also advocating moving to a one day week.
  • No, you are a throwback from the 19th century who happened to be at the right place at the right. People like you are anachronistic, Mr. Ma.

  • One person works 60 hours per week as a wage slave, kept in line by the fear of losing this position.
    Three people are unemployed as part of a permanent underclass.
    One works makes a meager wage keeping these three in line by any means necessary.

  • That is not going to do a bit of good for the service and support industry. IT is not going to stop, the servers run 24/7/365 and need tending to whenever there is a problem, or they will be waiting until Monday comes rolling around. Same for healthcare, and the food services. In fact, their hours might get longer and longer.

  • Every major technological advance has promised that workers will have to work less, and yet this hasn't come to pass. It's just another "pie in the sky" view of what technology can do. So don't plan those 6 day weekends just yet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      They certainly can, at least in the US. The question is whether they'll be allowed to.

      Outsourcing plus the lack of labor organization means the business will always have the upper hand in collecting all of the excess profits.

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