What To Do When Machines Do Everything

Preface

We know what you might be thinking: When machines do everything, what am I going to do? It's a good question.

If machines can do everything, then how are humans going to make a living? How are we going to pay the rent or mortgage or put food on the table? How are we going to survive when software eats all the knowledge work?

Even if you have reached a stage in your career in which you feel safe from the rise of the new machines, how will your children thrive when computers can out-think, out-work, and out-manage them? What do they study? Where do they focus? And will they have any chance of living a life as good as yours?

At work, how should your company be structured when so much can now be automated? What will happen to all those middle-class, middle-management knowledge jobs that currently stand as the economic bedrock of our society?

These are all good questions—the right questions—for indeed, something very big is going on.

The rise of artificial intelligence is the great story of our time. Decades in the making, the smart machine is leaving the laboratory and, with increasing speed, is infusing itself into many aspects of our lives: our phones, our cars, the planes we fly in, the way we bank, and the way we choose what music to listen to.

Within the next few years, AI will be all around us, embedded in many higher-order pursuits. It will educate our children, heal our sick, and lower our energy bills. It will catch criminals, increase crop yields, and help us uncover ...