In 500 years less than 10 percent of people on the planet will be doing paid work.
Thats a prediction by Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson who discusses the future of automation. Among his visions is that 90 percent of people will be unemployed in 500 years, thanks to automation; instead of doing busy work or a “physically repetitive thing for a living,” we’ll be involved in information or entertainment. … There will be no farmers, there will be no people working in manufacturing anymore.
As mentioned in my previous post ….Everything about Uber has been automated except for the driver. The billing, the fetching—every part of it is a modern, information-centric company. Interestingly, what that means is as soon as automated vehicles arrive, that driver is easily removed. You don’t have to restructure any part of that business.
What you’re farming out to humans today are those things that computers just barely can’t do. We know from Moore’s Law and improvements in computing that in two or three years [much of this] work will be automated. If a startup or new business venture has created a job that involves human labour, it probably has done so in a way that is pretty marginal. Whether you’re a technology enthusiast or a detractor, the rate at which this will shift is probably going to be unprecedented. There will be massive dislocation.
“It pretty much will be what life was like for most of human history—just without the gruesome servitude. The concept of a “job” is pretty recent. If you go back a few hundred years, everyone was either a slave or a serf, or living off slave or serf labor to pursue science or philosophy or art. We’ll live off the production of robots, free to be the next Aristotle or Plato or Newton,” he explained. “Unless we’re miserable without doing busy work.”
Whilst this is not going to effect us in the short term it’s importance is a fundamental consideration for the progressive idea generators out there; The long term players creating the next wave that will shift society as we know it to the next level: A well-informed innovator with an abundance-focused approach to the effects of increasing automation and the future of work. Jurvetson also underscores the importance of finding and funding these entrepreneurs who are thinking big and solving global problems — despite their inherent risk.
If you would like to add a comment on how you forsee the future job market; please sign up and drop me a line.
To you traversing your next idea
Steve