The truth is, that automation capabilities across all industries has been developing for a very long time, but only now do we start to see the major impact of such complete automation.
From the use of horses to help plough fields, to tractors, to the robo-crop that automatically removes weeds on fields. Take any industry and you can find examples since the first industrial revolution to this one, of automation slowly becoming more powerful, more complete and more transformative.
What is different this time, is that we can see real possibilities of complete and total automation, and even with tasks and jobs that we might have thought would be impossible to automate only a few years ago. This is driven by the power of the algorithm and specifically machine learning capabilities that have significantly advanced over the last five years.
We are at the start of a huge transformation across every industry, as they say, “no job is too big or too small”.
You can find online a relative list of jobs and how quickly they are to fully automated … what this shows is the diversity of capabilities of automation.
We should not be scared of this … it is just the next step in our evolution … we should embrace it and help figure out what this means for humankind … the potential this automation could give to us is beyond our wildness dreams.
However, there is a cautionary note, that is shared by many knowledgeable commentator, that being, the fear that all intelligence systems are controlled by a small group of people. But then history has shown us that any imbalance of power has always proved to be disastrous, and ultimately the balance will eventually be restored by some form of uprising or struggle.
Let’s hope this doesn’t happen this time.