Tech billionaire who predicted rise of social media says 9-5 work will be 'extinct'
Tech billionaire who predicted rise of social media says 9-5 work will be 'extinct'
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Tech tycoon Reid Hoffman has made a bold forecast that the traditional 9-5 workday could soon become a thing of the past. With artificial intelligence (AI) on the rise and the gig economy booming through platforms like Uber, Airbnb, and JustEat, the job market has already seen significant shifts in recent years.
The LinkedIn co-founder, who cashed in when he sold the professional networking platform to Microsoft for a whopping $26.2 billion (£21.4bn), has a track record of accurate predictions, having foreseen the AI revolution well before ChatGPT and similar technologies hit the mainstream.
In an interview that's come back into the spotlight, the Silicon Valley mogul remarked: "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.".
He added: "All of these things are the directional changes from what we've seen in the workforce for the last few decades.". The tech entrepreneur also shared an optimistic perspective on the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in an interview with CNBC's Fast Money. He suggested that AI could bring about significant opportunity and productivity while acknowledging it also introduces uncertainty.
Hoffman remarked: "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.".
