Jack Ma’s hiring tip: ‘If you think he will be your boss in five years, hire him’

Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, sees serious change on the horizon. In the next 30 years, artificial intelligence will outpace human knowledge, leading to job loss, the billionaire.

“The new wave is coming. Jobs will be taken away,” Ma says. “Some people, who catch up [with] the wave, will be rich, will be more successful.”

But for those who fall behind, says Ma, the future will be “painful.”

 At the heart of the fast-approaching technological new age, Ma says, is data. According to his projections for the future job market, skills associated with data and its analysis will become extremely valuable.

“The world is going to be data,” Ma says. “I think this is just the beginning of the data period.”

In a wide-ranging interview with Charlie Rose at Alibaba’s Gateway ’17 event in Detroit, Jack Ma touched on topics like Taobao’s humble beginnings, the hiring tip he gives colleagues and the struggles of an entrepreneur.

The founder and executive chairman shared how he has never stopped being a teacher, how he is planning for retirement and the opposition he faced in the early days of the internet in China.