I am going to start this piece by saying two things:

• Most of the current job set up will disappear in the next 5–10 years

• As an economy, jobs will not vanish off the face of the earth

I know most people are telling themselves at this stage, “Well, it won’t be my job that is going anywhere. I will make sure of it.”

What we don’t realize is that it is not in our control. Corporations deciding to shut down departments and/or reduce manpower is a business decision.

Corporate Profits are increasing, Income Paid is also increasing but the number of people it is being paid to, is decreasing.

Over the last 200 years this alarm has been raised, stating that economies will crash due to unemployment. But over the last two centuries, we humans have been proving experts and economists wrong.

There were 22 million horses in 1915, only 3 million was reported in 1960. Today, using a horse to commute is a joke for most of us. Thankfully for us, horses did not have the intelligence to find new forms of employment. The same can be said for the Post Office. Can you imagine our children ever sending letters through post or telegram? The thing that makes us different from horses, that makes us relevant and indispensable to the economy is our ability to think, learn and adapt. Today, technology is finally beginning to encroach on this very Human Capability.

AlphaGo self-learning to play the game and beating the world champion Lee Sedol, in a game that is driven by intuition for the most part, is a big leap in the field of Technology, AI and Machine Learning. AlphaGo learns from experience. Similarly, we have Libratus, the AI that beat the world champion in Poker. And here I thought intuition and experience was only reserved for Humans and Animals! 😉

What do I see in the foreseeable Future?

I see a future where we have more time, less work essentially implying more time with family and friends and our loved ones. This is the Happy Vision.

The more realistic view is that a lot of people will more likely be left behind. There is expected to be a massive income distribution problem because most of us (ages 20–40) are not trained to acquire the skill set that will make us relevant in a world where more than 50% of jobs/employment is taken over by self-learning intuitive machines.

We will experience significant Levels of Unemployment, Under-employment, Stagnant Wages and Declining Income in a lot of cases too- if you aren’t tired of reading/listening about it yet, wait for the next 2 years. As an economy, this is a challenge because a major part of income distribution today happens through jobs. Hence, interestingly, without the buying capability of the larger population, even the market of the economy will decline and/or stagnate. How will we purchase if we don’t have income sources to afford them?

So, this is not just a problem of employees but also of businesses.

These are the top industries and/or professions that will essentially disappear- Agriculture, Drivers, Print and Publishing, Manufacturing and Construction Workers, Banking, Travel agents, Customer Support, Military, Accountants, Stock Trading (only 10% trading today is done by humans, the rest is done by Bots). So essentially every stock trader is competing against a Bot. What are the odds of beating a Bot? In 2016, 8 out of 10 of the most profitable Hedge Funds in the US were based on AI exclusively or primarily.

So, all my friends who spend hours learning about stock trading to invest in the right stocks, buckle up! There are new competitors in the market whose failure rate is less than less than 1%.

Alas, humans!

(Traffic Police Picture Credit: @sunilparam.com)

PS: Hold on for the last and final piece of this series. This is where I got my answers. Look out for yours!