I feel that we are on the cusp of a major shift.
We’ve had the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the digital revolution but all those are peanuts compared to the Artificial Intelligence revolution that is on its way.
Soon we will live in an age of driverless cars, robotic surgery, automated factories and distribution, self-stocking supermarkets, total surveillance, automated greenhouses and wars through drones.
We won’t need people to do the jobs. The need for most work will have gone.
So what do we do with the excess workers?
Do we continue to concentrate the wealth at the top? Do the factory owners automate, employ few staff, and pocket the profits?
Do we go down to a three day week (on the same pay) and distribute the work?
Do we give people a share of the increased profits and free time?
Will we all share in the additional wealth?
Do we retrain people into the caring professions – teaching, nursing, caring for the elderly?
Do we use technology to protect nature or destroy it?
Do we encourage creativity and leisure or narcotise with TV and computer games?
Do we give our weapons over to machines that can think and respond more quickly?
Do we simply do away with surplus population?
Do we have a two tier society of gross inequality with a super-rich elite and a miserably poor and controlled mass of drones?
Is anybody trying to deal with the possibilities and coming up with answers?
The world’s about to change – is it going to be better or worse?
Who’s going to be left behind this time?