Will A Machine Replace You?

An excerpt:

What jobs are secure from the onslaught of automation? Ben Goertzel says, “those that involve transferring knowledge from one area to another, or thinking broadly, creatively and integratively, because these [tasks] require powerful general intelligence, not just narrowly specialized intelligence.“

All the technology that’s being talked about right now are great enablers – they let you do something in a far more economical and time-sensitive way. But, they do not manufacture experiences for you. They don’t they engage in a conversation with you, nor do they empathize with you. They just enable you to do deterministic things better and faster. They stay within a boundary that involves itself in the mechanics of things. But, the translation of it into a certain quality of experience is still done by humans, depending upon the way they use it. Making music, movies or having stimulating telephonic conversations are all facilitated by technology, but technology does not translate things into an experience that people can cherish. This step still involves heavy human input.

As Dan Pink says, the skills that would still be sourced from humans would have the following three characteristics:

• Are you doing something that someone overseas can’t do cheaper?
• Are you doing something that a computer can’t do faster?
• Does what you do satisfy some of the spiritual, emotional, or esthetic needs of our society?

Doesn’t that give you something to think about? How are you preparing to thrive when such an era does descend?