Bill gates has urged everyone to read 5 books in this summer. One book is “Homo Deus” by Israeli writer - Yuval Noah Harari. He has already given one more best seller book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,"
Harari is strong believer of Artificial intelligence and its impact on mankind. According to him “Next 2-3 decades would be transformative”. World will move from homo-sapiens (man) to machine. Carbon to silica. Intelligent life will change its base from carbon to silica.
He has given a simple example of “Driver less car”. More and more people are believing in it now. These cars won’t drink. They won’t do accidents. They follow red lights and rules. They don’t sleep. They work 24 hours as true servant. He visualised that city traffic will move in q’s with same speed. Same will happen with trucks on highways. A common logarithm will run and control this larger network of cars and trucks. Driving may be in top 3 employments today.
If they come in reality in next 5 to 10 years, it will create billions of job loss. Taxi drivers or truck drivers will become obsolete. In their mid 40s, 50s, , they won’t have choice. Reskilling would be difficult. We will have a jobless society. Power and money will move to people who will rule that tiny software or algorithm or wireless network. They will be handful.
His visualization looks scary. A world without jobs will be like many unproductive people moving around aimlessly. They won’t have much political power, view, or money. They will be USELESS. We can assume that similar may happen to other roles like security guard, cook, teacher, or office goers.
I believe if Artificial intelligence is so accurate and productive, it should be used to serve mankind in solving problems like cancer, obesity, Interstellar travel or science frontier. Using against humans would be deadly for all even for those who rules these algorithm. Jobless mind or useless mind can be addicted to media and drugs and self-consumed. Or they may kill those are ruling them. Man has to thread this change carefully.
May be his fears are over-rated. Same fears came when tractors came for agriculture. Earlier 80% people were in agriculture. and same when ATM came in banking. All changes have fears attached to them. We are living in interesting time. Changes are so fast.