APADIA 29: What’s Coming?

DARPA says that in 2045 – which is only as far away from today as 1989 is, for perspective – we’ll communicate with each other using neural signals. No more keyboards. AI will run much of our world.

RAND says that driverless cars could eliminate the jobs of 50-66% of the four million professional drivers in the US.

The Economist goes even further, saying that almost half of all jobs will be eliminated by computerization in the next twenty years.

Between AI, machine learning, automation, robotics – and globalization, increasing competition – many jobs will disappear, both blue- and white-collar.

Simultaneously, the span of the average career is changing. We don’t retire at 55 anymore. Retirement comes later and later – if at all, sometimes! – for many of us, meaning that we have more time to do more and different work in our careers.

So we have more people working in fewer jobs, whose work has become vastly different and will probably change a great deal over their lifetime.

Success will become less about who works the hardest or the fastest, but more about who can predict and adjust the best. We’ll need to be less like rowboats plugging along, and more like sailboats tacking to catch the wind. Let’s not hide in the harbor, but learn to adjust our sails.