If you’re less than fifty years old, your role at work will definitely be affected. And if you’re over 50 but still working, yours will be as well.
When machines become smarter than people, every working man and woman will experience profound and permanent change in their occupation, their career and their access to the American Dream. It is the ultimate technological step function. And it will change the graph of employment forever.
Human beings will go from being coveted as talent and recruited as an essential asset of the modern enterprise to being seen as irrelevant and disposed of by the millions. The layoffs will be permanent and the opportunities for reemployment will be nonexistent.
The situation will be so disruptive, it could threaten our position at the top of the planet’s pecking order. Not because those machines will terminate our lives, but because they will end our ability to earn a living. Algorithms and robots will be superior to humans in every respect, so visionary corporate leaders and bright up-and-comers, savvy professionals and innovative contributors will no longer be needed.
When will it happen?
According to a 2012 poll of scientists and academicians, the most likely date is just twenty years from now, in 2040. So, even if your career is safe, the careers of your kids and grandkids are fully exposed and at risk.
Now, that prediction will, of course, generate some pushback, especially from two quarters. The skeptics will beat their chests and argue that no one’s crystal ball can be that accurate. And, the naysayers will huff and puff that there is no evidence such a dystopian outcome will even occur.
Both will dress their arguments up in the armor of scientific analysis. Only data, they will solemnly opine, are real. If something can’t be described with hard data – with measurable evidence – it doesn’t exist.
Fair enough. Here are some hard data. At the current rate that smart machines are replacing people:
• The Boston Consulting Group estimates that 23 percent of all human industrial jobs will be lost to such machines in just the next 2 years.
• McKinsey & Company estimates that 40 percent of all knowledge jobs will suffer the same fate in the next 10 years.
In other words, thousands of blue-collar and white-collar workers are already being replaced by byte-collar workers. All the step function of super smart machines will do is accelerate today’s reality. That acceleration, however, will push the limits of our comprehension. It will be a turning point in the history of humankind. As Ray Kurzweil, one of the most celebrated inventors of our time, has put it, the disruption will feel like “exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth.”
How can you protect yourself (and your family)?
Take the first step: commit yourself to achieving situational awareness. Educate yourself on what is happening now, what could happen in the future and when that future is likely to occur.
Disruption only harms when it is unexpected.