Jack Ma: Stop looking to manufacturing growth for jobs

TORONTO: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd chairman Jack Ma, who wooed President Donald Trump earlier this year with a pledge to help create one million new US jobs by 2021, said people should stop looking to manufacturing to drive economic growth.

While the rapid speed of technological change is understandably causing concern about the future, Ma called on leaders to embrace the promise of advances like artificial intelligence to span whole new industries.

“These worries are very normal – two hundred years ago when the steam machine came, people started thinking the steam machine is going to take a lot of jobs,” Ma said, speaking at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York. “Because of artificial intelligence, because of the robots, manufacturing is no longer the main engine for jobs.”

Instead, small businesses using the internet to extend their markets will lead economic growth this century, Ma said.

The message ties neatly into Alibaba’s business plan, which hinges on making the Chinese company the go-to online marketplace for entrepreneurs. Ma’s million-job plan for the US centres around helping small businesses navigate and sell into the Chinese market, where Alibaba says it has already contributed to the creation of 30 million jobs.

Ma also called out those who drum up fear about the prospect of artificial intelligence replacing humans and even eventually outsmarting and controlling their living creators.