The future of work with AI
I have recently listened to a very interesting podcast from Forbes about the ‘end of work’ due to artificial intelligence.
We have all heard that robots will take the world. They will be smarter than humans, and we will end up sitting on couches waiting for minimum income to be given to us from somebody.
I think it’s time to clear up this idea that all of us will get made redundant and robots are going to be smarter than we are, and there is going to be nothing left for us to do.
In reality robots will be the greatest invention in history.
Yes, they will put us out of work and make us fall in love with work!
In the past we had to work six days a week from dawn to dusk on a farm, and it didn’t matter if we loved it or hated it. That’s what we had to do. All human activities where directed towards the creation of food. And then these robots came along like tractors and fertilisers, which didn’t put us out of work, but finally freeing us up from doing other things.
Just look at the invention of automobile which allows us to get from point A to point B in less than an hour, when in the past horses and carriages would have taken us over a day to get to our destination.
The same is for the invention of trains and airplanes; but also running water and electricity.
The more we automate the work of the past, the more of us will get up in the morning and do something that is really associated to our unique skills and intelligence, such that we are going to fall in love with work.
Machines are taking over jobs that humans no longer want to do, freeing us up to do things we really like to do, like becoming professionals specialised in what we enjoy the most.
For example being paid to put make-up on someone else’s face; or make wedding cakes as a business; or make remunerative careers out of love for wine like sommeliers.
This is now possible because we have automated things that none of us wanted to do in the first place.
Thanks to AI we get prosperity. Prosperity creates opportunities.
Prosperity is the rising of productivity.
Because now prosperity has been created, the demand for finer things grows.
Without prosperity people have to work every day just to survive. There won’t be the money to promote the art, and people won’t have the time to sit back and relax and enjoy the arts.
Prosperity comes though the creation and application of capital. During periods of booming economy, the funds for cultural necessities, like orchestras, museums and arts skyrockets.
Therefore, the bigger the economy the more money are directed to these wonderful cultural activities.
There are occupations that couldn’t exist without prosperity.
A good example are professional video games players. In the past such a job would have not make sense at all, but today in a world in which an enormous amount of wealth has been created, such the growing demand for entertainment, people discovered new ways they want to be entertained. So today video games players are filling up Madison Square Garden in New York with thousands of people that want to watch them play. The salary price for video games players have gone over the roof.
Following on this, there is now also demand for video games coaches.
And dog walkers today make a living walking dogs. These are people with a passion for pets that can now do a job they like and earn up to six figures a year.
And pet owners can now even hire a nutritionist for the family pet.
Demand for entertainment means higher standards for sports. So in the ecosystem around the sport, we now see few new specialist jobs that didn’t exist years ago, like full time game strategists, nutritionists, sleep coaches and personal trainers.
For example, the famous tennis player Andre Agassi employed a strings coach, who is someone that is paid quite a lot to fly around the world just to string his rackets.
Thanks to AI people can now make a career out of their passion.
Thanks to prosperity, wants and needs become specialised, such as jobs become specialised. And people who have got passion for coffee can now make a career out of it, like becoming a coffee brewer expert. But not to forget about other new specialist jobs like personal shoppers and professional huggers.
This is what you get with prosperity. More and more people get out and go to work and get to do something they are immensely proud of, like pastry chefs, interior designers, fitness trainers and motivational speaker, and get paid well for doing that.
So thanks to AI we now have the freedom to learn what elevates us, to do jobs that become even more specialised every day.
