Are AI and automation going to lead to mass unemployment?
We spoke to King’s Riccardo Zacconi about his ‘crazy’ prediction for the future, and he said that we are going to have the opposite problem.
He believes that big problem in the near future is that, with an ageing population, we are not going to have enough workers.
He believes unemployment rates will effectively be at zero for many areas as demographic make it hard to find enough young people to do certain jobs.
Do you agree?
Riccardo co-founded King in March 2003 and was its CEO from the start, overseeing the company's rapid growth in the global mobile gaming sector to over 500 million monthly players, the company's IPO on NYSE and its $6bn sale to Activision Blizzard in 2016.
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:35:13
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Crazy Intel. It's not a podcast about big ideas. I'm your host, Michael Stothard, an investor at first minute capital. This is a bite sized episode recorded at a Founders Forum event up in Scotland. And I'm speaking to Ricardo Akoni, the co-founder and CEO of the gaming company King. I started by asking him what was his one big, crazy prediction for the future.
00:00:36:09 - 00:00:58:04
Speaker 2
It's not a prediction. It's very much stats. Basically, you see that the world is becoming older, especially in the Western world. And and as the world is becoming older, we need others that work and support the older people. And I think that now the unemployment was one of the major issues in the past, but I don't think is going to be the major issue in the future.
00:00:59:04 - 00:01:24:01
Speaker 2
And there will be areas like, for example, health care and support for for the elderly that will become massive, where there's a massive need already now. And currently we are importing people from from countries that are poor. But as these countries also will will mature and be and the average income will grow up. I think that will be an issue in finding people that actually want to do their job and are willing to do their job.
00:01:24:08 - 00:01:43:06
Speaker 2
Now, if I could move the world 50 years in the future and say we would be technologically advanced, that we would have robots that can do this, they'll be amazing. But I don't think it's going to go so far as I think there will be still big changes to get there. So that will be probably a big gap where this is going to be a massive issue.
00:01:43:19 - 00:02:02:09
Speaker 3
So you think that in the in the future there will be none or very little unemployment because we're going to have the opposite problem. There's going to be so many old people there not going to be enough young people and they're not enough people to do the jobs.
00:02:02:13 - 00:02:24:06
Speaker 2
Is that. Yeah. Or at least there will be areas where it will have the opposite of unemployment. And then the question is, will people that are maybe now a bit more, let's say, that have a higher ambition in doing other jobs? Will they be willing to actually do the job of helping, helping older people, for example, and taking these jobs?
00:02:24:06 - 00:02:27:03
Speaker 2
And who is going to do that?
00:02:27:06 - 00:02:42:20
Speaker 3
This is the big sort of Elon Musk is quite big on this, that the problem of humanity is not overpopulation. It's actually going to be on the population. People aren't having enough babies now and there's going to be this demographic sort of crisis.
00:02:43:05 - 00:03:03:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, we are really now in a demographic crisis. I believe if you look at, for example, Germany. We have are you there and not enough people that actually carers. And so it's really now an issue in this issue. Will we actually become much bigger as medecine improves? You know, everyone we've they're they're predicting that in ten years cancer will be defeated.
00:03:03:00 - 00:03:28:11
Speaker 2
Maybe we will take longer. But as that is happening, basically the average age we will go from, I think 78 years to probably over 100 years and a hundred years. The other prediction is that the prediction basically 800 dementia, B.C., more or less everyone is going to have dementia. This dementia has not been solved yet. This means there will be many, many more people that will need proper basically full time care.
00:03:29:16 - 00:03:32:01
Speaker 2
So those are, I think, big problems that are coming up on us.
00:03:33:10 - 00:04:00:00
Speaker 3
I like the idea of this gap between this gap before robots can help can help do these jobs. That's I think that's fascinating. But it also it might lead to just people, cat people like these jobs that have traditionally been not very well-paid, maybe undervalued, just having higher salaries and more prestige attached them to the market could adjust to these things, is what I'm saying.
00:04:00:05 - 00:04:22:21
Speaker 2
The market will have to address know another because otherwise the only other ways that people will die and not being taken care of, which is of course not not not not unthinkable at this moment in time at least, but so and the other thing is that when fewer people work, there is a risk that also there is less production.
00:04:22:21 - 00:04:57:20
Speaker 2
So there is less revenue generated in countries. We become poorer at the same time. So when that is the case, then, you know, this can also have a big impact on that, on on politics, you know, from the current democracies to potentially populism. Populism fails, then they might be different solutions. I'm not saying that communism will come back, but, you know, when when people are hungry or in need, I think that what we are seeing now, a pressure on the Democrat Democratic system has had quite a few pressures.
00:04:58:20 - 00:05:03:16
Speaker 2
And I think that we have to think very hard about how we want to have the world look like in the in the future.
00:05:04:02 - 00:05:07:02
Speaker 3
Yeah. And the answer is, we should all be having more more babies.
00:05:07:19 - 00:05:24:13
Speaker 2
We should have more babies, but maybe we should have also more equal world in some ways. You know, and think of these things in because we have long, very long term plans and not just choose something that is good for now, but or after after a few years. We know already that it might not deliver and then we have an issue.
00:05:24:21 - 00:05:40:13
Speaker 2
So invest in infrastructure, invest in longer term project that needs more a longer term view. And I think that's where, for example, China is doing extremely good work. And so if you look at the population, I don't think anyone is starving in China, but if you look at the US, for example, actually many people die on the street.
00:05:40:13 - 00:06:02:02
Speaker 2
You go to San Francisco, you have people that actually are starving or dying on the street. So a more unequal society in some way. Of course, we have the freedom and it brings out entrepreneurs. It brings out people that want to excel and and live better in some ways. And that's the advantage of having freedom. But maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
00:06:03:06 - 00:06:05:24
Speaker 3
Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really appreciate.
00:06:05:24 - 00:06:08:06
Speaker 2
It. Thank you.