In What to Do When Machines Do Everything the book asks that all important question. The authors start by averring that we are in the midst of another economic boom that is taking time to rev up. All of the previous economic super explosions went through the same process. These three revolutions created unprecedented wealth in a select few with an eventual spread of that wealth in a more democratic manner. I honestly don’t know if I can swallow all of that hogwash, but the authors have statistics and historical records to back up their claims. The first super boom was with the advent of the Power Loom. The Luddites realized that their skills would go to the wayside, but it allowed more people to work on weaving and making textiles. The second boom was with the Steam Engine. It made horses less useful. The third boom was with the Assembly Line.

As with every boom, they go through an established pattern. First comes the innovation, then comes a bubble, then the bubble bursts and there is an economic downturn, and finally, the technology finds a stable point to reside in. This manifests itself in an S-curve. With advanced Artificial Intelligence, the same rules apply. I guess the main introduction was with the Internet back in the late 1990s. I recall the dot-com bubble, but I was a bit too young to care at the time. Following that came a long period of economic downturn with the housing bubble and the Great Recession. Now we just have to wait for AI to go and take a great many jobs. For instance, the authors dream of a future where your car will self-diagnose an issue, drive itself to a repair station, and be back in time to take you home from work. Wow. I can foresee a future wherein we all become like the people from the Dune novels if that is the case.

I have issues with AI driving in the first place. It isn’t that it is a bad idea, far from it. I just don’t know if people will go for it. I mean, on the one hand, more and more people love to text and drive. It might be some kind of perception bias on my part, but it does seem that way. Automated cars would enable you to text ridiculous things all you want. On the other hand, I don’t think the car would break the speed limit, and from how people drive where I live, that is something that would need to be rectified. The car probably wouldn’t break any other driving laws either, and where I live there are people that run stop signs and red lights. Would such technology make it easier to enforce some kind of police state Dystopia? I don’t know.

This book didn’t really fill me with hope since I am pretty sure that my job can be replaced quite easily. So we will see what becomes of everyone as AI can compose better music, play Chess and Go better, and do all sorts of things that we always envisioned as being uniquely human. ( )