The end of humans

If anything represents the new new thing in our technological age, it's the arena of artificial intelligence.  From the factory floor to the glittering glass office of law firms, smart machine are doing job, after job, after job.

The conversation about jobs going offshore is so yesterday.  Today it’s robots and algorithms that are the threats.

Manufacturing is only the beginning.  Service sector jobs, clerical jobs, accounting, paralegal, are all starting to be done by machines.  Drones will soon do deliveries and driving,  perhaps the largest bastion of blue collar jobs, will, within 10 years, be replaced by the autonomous vehicles.

So what’s left for humans?  As machines start to program themselves, as we’ve seen with autonomous cars, as more and more higher level functions are done by machines, what’s a human to do?

That the subject of Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, a new book by Julia Kirby.

My conversation with Julia Kirby: