Rise of the Machines

A recent report from PwC found that automation, robotics and artificial intelligence stand to make 30% of all UK jobs redundant in just 15 years’ time – with losses as high as 50% in some sectors. Couple this trend with the looming emergence of 3D printing, distributed manufacturing, self-driving cars and the Internet of Things, and the numbers could be even higher. 

But it’s not just manually intensive, blue-collar jobs on the line. 

It’s now 20 years since IBM’s Deep Blue beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, and the new generation of AIs can already outperform accountants, lawyers, doctors, telemarketers and even the world’s best GO master. In some sectors, it is already more cost-effective to completely automate the entire value chain from extraction, through production, distribution and delivery to the customer – with almost no human involvement whatsoever – than it is to maintain a human-operated supply chain. 

The age of intelligent machines has well and truly arrived. 

Should we be worried? Professor Stephen Hawking has stated that AI could be the greatest thing ever for humanity…or it could kill us all. While Elon Musk and Bill Gates have also expressed concerns about the existential risks posed by smarter than human artificial intelligence. 

But it’s not all “Skynet”, Terminator and dystopia on the horizon. AI, robotics and automation are also helping transform healthcare, environmental management and sustainability, cutting carbon emissions, delivering greater efficiencies, minimising health and safety risks, speeding innovation, saving lives and freeing workers from mindless drudgery so they can work on more fulfilling and satisfying tasks. 

How should we prepare for - and respond to - the radical transformations being unleashed by this Fourth Industrial Revolution? 

Can we make the machines work for the greater good to help build a better world for all? Or are we unleashing the forces of our own destruction, servitude and obsolescence? 

Will the rise of the machines, require fundamental changes to our economic system, the adoption of universal incomes, and the creation of entirely new industries to keep people occupied and employed? 

Or will it be the death of work as we know it, leaving us to while away our days, sipping piña coladas in a beachside hammock? Or bloodied, hungry and desperate, rising up like John Connor or the Paris mob in a new post-apocalyptic hell?

These are the ideas we will explore in our September Crowd Forum on “The Rise of the Machines”. Join us as we delve into both the positive and negative implications of this fascinating and radical transformation, whose impacts are already being felt.

www.thecrowd.me/rise-machines